when it comes to handheld radio communications there are a lot of things to consider radios propagation antennas all of this can get really complicated really quickly but one major concern that a lot of people have these days is privacy with government surveillance and big tech censorship increasing to staggering levels more and more average people are considering handheld radios as a viable means of communication for everything from emergencies to daily communication that is a bit more private than a smartphone so when it comes to specifically handheld radio communications we like to think of two main avenues of approach number one is what you communicate and two is who you communicate to there is a third factor who might be listening but we'll address this as we go along these factors will dictate how you choose to communicate to put this into a succinct statement really what we are trying to define is our intent which is to establish secure voice or text communications between small localized groups of trusted individuals without using pre-established infrastructure and to do this we are going to use this illustration to show the increasingly more effective ways that you can prevent people from hearing and understanding your communication as we go from the bottom of the pyramid to the top we get more complex and more difficult which in turn means that fewer and fewer people can intercept and understand your communications now granted no communication form is foolproof least of all radios so all we are trying to do is do our best to limit who can hear and understand our communications but before we get too far into this we have to touch on the legality of things i only mention this because the self-appointed internet division of the fcc will show up in the comments section to educate everyone using their vast knowledge of legal expertise anyone who spends even just five minutes around the ham radio community knows that it is unfortunately filled with a lot of people that are more concerned with memorizing the fcc's arbitrary confusing contradictory and nonsensical rules rather than helping people i'm cooperating i never met this man before i hate the constitution i hate free space i'll stitch i know things fair warning sir money has an additional 80 to your fine and for people like this my decorum my respect and my patience has run out it's not a tantrum and i'm not jealous i'm just fed up if you are one of the ham radio operators who does this at a time when we need to encourage people to help us develop and modernize this technology you are destroying your own hobby so chill out of course since there are most likely federal agencies surveilling this video we are obligated to say don't do anything illegal always obey the holy scripture from the fcc however it is up to you whether or not you want to follow the fcc's rules or not the only person that is responsible for your actions is you so today we are going to be talking a lot about this middle ground right here and as such we are not going to talk about the legality so much but rather focus on what is technologically possible rather than what is legally possible really the only significant reason for bringing this up in the first place is because laws do matter when it comes to what a company is willing to invest their time and effort to build if something is questionably legal or is not legal at all a company in the united states is not going to invest the time and energy to build such a technology out even if something is technologically possible the laws are going to hold a company back from doing what they want to do or what the customers want to do so today we're going to talk about the law as little as possible and only when it is really a barrier to you using or even owning a certain technology so let's dive right into this one of the major considerations for radio communications is what frequency you choose so first up is vhf and uhf these are the bands that are responsible for ensuring the overwhelming majority of all line-of-sight communications everything from your bowel fang to what we call bubble pack radios that you can pick up at really any store these days that's what these radios will use most of the time and this is because there are ways to use these radios without a license legally or quasi legally is using a baofeng on frs or gmrs frequencies illegal maybe maybe not depending on who you ask if you ask the hams everything's illegal but if you use a cheap baofeng on an frs frequency will anyone even the fcc or other hams even know about it ah the answer to that is no there's no way you can detect that but that's a different story with the next one hf radio hf radio is kind of out of place on this chart and honestly it requires its own video it doesn't deserve to be in this little pyramid here because it's genuinely a fascinating frequency range that offers a lot of very interesting capabilities but we haven't found any quasi-legal way to use hf radio without a license right to jail right away and since hf radio offers an extremely long range a lot of people can hear and triangulate you and since it's the staple of amateurs you will find it very hard to rely on hf radio as the bread and butter of your communications plan moving on up we come to a handful of very obscure bands this is something that you can research on your own a bit because each radio band has its ups and downs but you might find that a good way to increase your privacy is to operate on bands and frequencies that not many people use and one of the better bands for this is the 700 800 and 900 megahertz bands this is what many police and commercial radios use specifically because it's far away from the traditional vhf uhf bands granted these days these frequencies are becoming more popular among amateurs but for now it's still not that common in many areas simply because there aren't too many radios capable of transmitting and receiving in this frequency range and the ones that do are very expensive but up here at the top is essentially summarizing the best parts of all of these tactics using frequencies that nobody uses or frequencies that are slightly out of band but are still within the transmitting capability of the radio you are using or transmitting really close to or even in between the offsets of something else to confuse people trying to direction find you or using wide non-standard offsets to confuse scanners or hams who are used to a 600 kilohertz offset we're using a radio with a very high selectivity meaning that you can squeeze in your transmission into places where normally you wouldn't find a transmission depending on what radios you have and what you are willing to do and what you're willing to spend your money on there are a lot of things that can be done to make your communications a bit more private just by choosing the right frequency next up is a much larger topic than we can talk about here but it is the eternal question of analog versus digital radio most people that try to get into radio by buying a couple of cheap valve fangs might not even know that digital radio exists again this is some more homework for you but the short version is that the overwhelming number of radios on the market most if not all baofengs all bubble pack radios and most radios that hams use are analog meaning that they transmit an analog signal digital radios which use a digital signal are less common but they are becoming more and more popular every day in fact their popularity has exploded in recent years because there's a lot of benefits to using them you can look into the differences and the pros and cons of each but here's what we think for a professional non-hobby use there are very few reasons to use analog radios anymore for one you cannot encrypt analog signals several companies have tried with things like voice inversion but there is nothing that can't easily be cracked in real time by someone who knows what they're doing and that's a deal breaker for many people so if you're trying to use encryption of any kind your only option is digital digital signals are also much more clear than analog and digital signals have a farther range than analog at the same power level and there are lots of different digital modes that you can choose from so you can take your pick this is just a handful of the sort of the most common ones the downsides of digital radio are really just three-fold one digital radios are more expensive and so that's really a barrier for a lot of people number two is that there is no quasi-legal way to use a digital radio without a license so there's really no way to get around that unless you don't care about that and finally which is really the biggest problem and one that we're currently working on right now is that digital radio modes like dmr which is the most common one are really really hard to build repeaters for with an analog radio you can literally buy two bow things and build a repeater in 10 minutes it's it's that easy so that's really one of the main reasons to keep analog radio around for professional uses sometimes because if you want to build a repeater on digital radio like dmr it is not easy to do most people in the ham radio world use hot spots instead of repeaters which is its own rabbit hole you can go down but the bottom line is that unless you've got significant technical skill to build one or have several thousands of dollars laying around to buy a commercial repeater using digital radios with repeaters is not really feasible at this time but that's changing in the next couple of years that will be an incorrect statement because right now a lot of people are working on figuring out how to more easily build digital radio repeaters and on to the topic that everyone has been waiting for encryption encryption is one of those touchy subjects among hams most will tell you that encryption is illegal and you go directly to jail do not pass go or collect your 200 for even thinking about using it no trial no nothing but that's not true you can legally use encryption on your radios in a few specific circumstances and situations but we can get into the dirty details of that later if anyone really cares the reason for bringing this up is to explain the very first level of encryption inherit heavy air quotes because it's not encryption at all and that is what we generally call privacy tones i only put this on here because i wanted to stress how you should not use these privacy tones also sometimes called ct css tones or pl tones are not private all they do is prevent you from hearing someone else on your frequency these do not stop anyone from hearing you they only stop you from hearing some random person that might also be on your frequency so they provide negative levels of privacy because someone is probably listening to you but you have no idea because you think you're safe so do not use these if you're concerned about privacy because i really don't know how companies have been able to get away with marketing privacy tones on their radios because it doesn't do that up next on the chart are digital modes which we've already talked about again digital systems by themselves are not encrypted but digital signals can only be heard by digital radios whereas analog signals can be heard by analog and digital radios usually so since encryption is such a touchy subject in the ham community a culture has emerged in which hams try to comply with the law but still make it harder to hear and digital radio is pretty good for this especially considering the popularity of the balfang radios love it or hate it balfang has sold millions of those radios globally so in almost every single area in the united states in every single town in this country there is going to be someone who can hear your uhf or vhf transmission but if you are using a digital radio even without encryption the number of people that can understand that transmission will be astronomically low the transmission if you try to listen to a digital transmission on an analog radio it just comes across as clicking and unintelligible you can't hear anything you can hear sound but you can't actually hear people talking right and speaking of doing things to reduce the number of people that can hear you but still remain legal by not using encryption look no further than your local police department public service entities but particularly law enforcement agencies have over the years been going to what are called trunked radio systems now we can get into the weeds for this later we've already talked about this a bit but the short and simple version is that most trunked radio systems use complex digital modes which make it very difficult for someone to hear even if they are listening out for it on a digital radio most of these systems are not encrypted so that they remain within the laws that are meant to ensure transparency between police and taxpayers a lot of states and cities and local areas have restrictions on local law enforcement using encryption in their radios like they they'll say like a city council will say hey look you can't use encryption on your standard dispatch radios but you can use encryption on your like your swat team radios and stuff like that but the complexity of these systems means that you often need to buy a specific police scanner that is capable of decoding or demodulating the police communications in your local area now granted many police departments around the country are just skipping right passes and going to fully encrypted radios regardless of whatever transparency laws exist but moving on up within the han radio or commercial business communities we have what we can genuinely call true encryption many commercial chinese radios quietly offer this for their radios again since encryption is not encouraged at all within the ham radio community if you were to look up a review for a radio on youtube or something most hams won't even mention the encryption feature but in many cases you will see like a basic or enhanced encryption in the programming software for a particular radio that has it and there's a little bit of a problem with this for one almost all of these encryption methods are proprietary and closed source so even if you do find a radio that advertises encryption unless you are highly technically skilled there's no way for you to verify that the message is actually encrypted to the level that the company claims for instance a lot of companies will advertise that their quote enhanced encryption is 128 bit which isn't great but it's better than nothing i guess but when people on the internet do their thing and investigate we find that due to the math and some other weird stuff that's complex to understand it's really just 40-bit encryption which is really easily crackable in real time by anyone who knows what they're doing these weird proprietary encryption methods might work for you something like this will prevent the kid down the block with a walkie-talkie from understanding you but the closed-source nature of a lot of this stuff is really hard to find seriously we have scraped the absolute bottom of the internet to find random forum posts from 10 years ago or a comment on a blog or a news article from five years ago about a specific radio's encryption capabilities it's just not easy to find any information on this stuff so really the final option is what most people will end up with by far the only encryption that we think is worth using for any serious use is aes 256. 256-bit encryption is the gold standard for all encryption at this current time this is simply the best you can do aes 256 is open source and it's the only encryption standard approved by the nsa to handle top secret information right now the undisputed leader of radio encryption is motorola for those of you who have been following us for a while you know our strong feelings about motorola as a company around here motorola and the atf compete for our attention for what we think is the most totalitarian entity in the united states but motorola created the aes 256 standard for how it applies to radios and as such they are the top dog when it comes to radio encryption because many companies use motorola's standard for their own radios so if you're trying to go for encryption aes 256 is the best you're going to get although be prepared to pay for it but there is something else to think about we dedicate a lot of time and effort to trying to hide our radio transmissions so much so that we forget to ask ourselves this question is it even worth hiding what you say if your transmission can be geo-located now we have talked about this in greater detail in a previous video so if you're interested in learning more please check out our video on radio direction finding we're literally showing you how people or agencies can hunt you down via the transmissions you emit on a daily basis but for those who just want the short version here's a quick rundown of what we're trying to explain imagine that you are running a surveillance operation and you're trying to find out where a certain person is transmitting from well if you intercept transmissions from these areas marked by the red dots on the screen this doesn't really tell you much the person transmitting can be over here on the left they can be down the road on the right they can be in this little green area down to the south you can't really tell where they're located but if we wait a little while and we pick up more transmissions the picture becomes even more clear and we can narrow this down to a specific house this is what happens in modern warfare those transmissions can have the most secure uncrackable encryption ever but if the transmission alone is in the same area every time an adversary does not need to understand what's being said to target that site so never forget that you can spend thousands of dollars on a radio and encrypt it with the highest levels of encryption but if you are constantly transmitting from the place that you sleep at night that's probably not a good idea so for us in our specific situation and for the things that we need radios for radio direction finding or rdf is by far the biggest concern so how do we address that well the first way is by using a low power level the general rule of thumb in the radio community is to only use enough power to complete the communication this is something that is often forgotten by most people that have radios so what does this look like in practice jumping back to our map here let's say that we are located in this house right here at the upper left and we need to communicate with a person or a team that is operating down somewhere in this little red blob but we also have an adversary within the battle space located up here to the top right a radio listening post which is trying to intercept our communications do we now see why the topics we've covered before are useful all of this comes together in situations like this but anyway let's say that we need to communicate with these dudes over here without the guys in the listening post hearing us well in this specific situation if we blast out our radio at maximum power everyone's going to hear us which is not only good for counter surveillance but it also allows us to be jammed very easily which is not good but if we dial the power down we might have a chance at being heard by our guys but not the adversarial force granted this is impossible to know radio wave propagation is some weird stuff and strange things happen all the time plus you are never really going to know where a surveillance site is located but ideally you would be able to use just barely enough power to get the job done without any interruptions of course it can be a bit nerve-wracking to be constantly on the edge of not having comms but it's all a balance a nice safety barrier is good to have in case things change or the ao shifts or whatever but the overall point is that using only the power that you need is crucial and always a good thing to do but there is something else that we can do and this is where things get even more complicated we can use terrain masking and directional antennas to make sure that the signal we're transmitting only goes where we want it to right down here at the bottom are what we call omnidirectional antennas these antennas are what most people think of when they get into radios and these are the kinds of antennas that will come with your radio when you buy it these antennas emit a signal in every direction equally but what if you were to use an antenna that points the signal in only one direction so if we jump back to our map here we can see that this signal right here that our previous signal with our omnidirectional antenna is a circular shape now this is slightly inaccurate because of many factors many people think of radio signals like a circle or a bubble but that's not quite right especially in urban environments but just for this example a circular transmission area is good enough to illustrate what using an omnidirectional antenna would do this is what it would look like but let's say that the listening post your adversary that is trying to intercept you is closer than the people you're trying to talk to well that's a problem because you can't reduce your power enough to really matter because then only the people that are in the listening post can hear you so for this we can use what's called a directional antenna this will beam your transmission along a certain path rather than every direction so by using a directional antenna you can easily reduce the number of people that can intercept your transmission really the only way to intercept this kind of transmission is to be located between each person transmitting this would also mean that directional signals are very hard to jam because the jammer would need to be using an insane amount of power or be located along the transmitting axis you can also do this with terrain transmitting down a valley using the mountains on either side of the valley to bounce the signal down like a bowling ball down a lane with the gutters up but this obviously relies on the terrain cooperating and since most people live in cities which are notorious for creating radio problems of their own directional antennas are usually a better bet and coming back to our chart here just like everything else we've talked about we can layer this one with other tactics we can use a directional antenna in conjunction with cooperating terrain we can also add in repeaters which mask the true transmission site so that if someone far away hears you and tries to direction find the transmission site chances are they're going to find the repeater instead of you using a directional antenna to hit a repeater that is off-site a repeater which itself is connected to a directional antenna to transmit to a final site man that would be pretty effective at confusing anyone who's trying to figure out what's going on much less anyone is trying to triangulate you of course directional antennas have disadvantages too directional antennas are not super great for mobile applications and you have to know where the other guy is in order to point the antenna in their direction but if you have pre-established communications windows and procedures directional antennas are really hard to beat for just being a bit more secure in your communications but remember when it comes to sending information via the radio waves we don't even necessarily need to use our voice to send that information a lot of times and generally speaking just like how power level affects the number of people that can hear us if someone is trying to scan for a frequency or scan for a transmission the length of time of your transmission also matters very significantly generally speaking the longer you hit that push-to-talk button the longer you're transmitting the longer that you spend talking on the radio the easier it is for people to find out where you are so right down here at the bottom is what we call rag chewing now this is just ham radio slang for hopping on the radio you know for hobby uses just to have a good time and talk with your friends on the radio not worrying at all about who's listening to you or and not worrying about direction finding at all that's okay for a hobby use but in a tactical scenario you don't want to do this this is not good you don't want to just spend your entire day on the radio transmitting with really long transmissions of like sometimes a minute or two minutes or more that's that's not something that's good when you're trying to limit the number of people that can hear you so really the best thing the the best practice for voice communications is to keep your voice communications as short as you possibly can but sometimes even a voice message is too long how long does it take for you to read a sentence out loud it takes you several seconds but what if you could type out your message and send it in less than less than half a second a lot of dmr radios nowadays a lot of digital radios come with a texting feature that allow you to send a text message uh to another radio or a radio that's you know part of your group uh and that message is going to take just fractions of a second to send because it's sending it's compressing all of those characters down to a very small size so you really you're only exposing yourself for a very short period of time now something to keep in mind as i have indicated here on the screen is that many dmr text messaging features on most digital radios are not encrypted so you're sending this message in the clear over the airwaves so anyone can read it that's something to keep in mind another more well-known method of sending data over the airwaves is what's called aprs or automated packet reporting system or automated position reporting system depending on who you ask most people just call it packet radio and this is its own rabbit hole again some more homework for you to look into but this is really fascinating you can use aprs to do things like send emails and send text messages and weather reports and automatically report your position without using some kind of cellular service it's very interesting and there's a lot of different ways you can use aprs and it's a little bit more well known than a lot of these proprietary texting services that are on dmr radios they're usually proprietary whereas aprs is really more of a standard and then finally just like a few of our other categories we can layer all of this stuff together we can use encrypted text-based communication and voice communication only when it's absolutely needed and even then short transmissions from multiple locations if you do this you're limiting the amount of time that you're spending transmitting your location out in the form of your your radio signal getting out there so remember the shorter you can keep your communications the better and a good way to do that is by sending data instead of voice and finally we come to one of the more contentious subjects that not a lot of people talk about but it's definitely a factor and that is what we're calling the family factor or the convenience factor in other words how easy is your setup to use with your family who might not care about radios this is something that a lot of people deal with it's just everybody knows you know hey when you know the radio guy in the family is bringing the radios out and nobody really pays attention it's something that's really hard for people to understand and depending on the complexity of your system you're gonna you might have to choose a less ideal situation a less ideal setup just because a a setup that you use that's less ideal is better than the best system that you don't use so right down here at the bottom you might have you know small kids who you're trying to get into to radio and all they can handle is a small cheap battle thing or that's all you want to invest in them because you know there'd be young kids or something like that hey there you go that could be a great option if you've got some older folks around who might understand digital radios or they might be able to to handle the responsibility of a you know 100 plus digital radio then you can go with digital and with digital radios it was analog ones too you can program the front front face so that really the only thing they can do is push the push to talk button and change the volume so if you're worried about people kind of messing around with systems and and your settings uh you can do that very easily and then moving on up we can move into encryption now uh depending on your level of expertise and how people understand how keys work and things like that you might have to choose a less ideal encryption method that's a little bit simpler to understand or you might be the tip of the spear and you might be running a a small local group of you know uh people who are in your trusty group and they understand the the impact of radios and they're they're responsible enough and they're willing to spend the money on a five thousand dollar radio uh to run some aes 256-bit encrypted you know radio on really strange frequencies and and take that responsibility to the next level so you always have to consider convenience or your your family in your decision-making process because chances are if you've made it this far into the video you're going to be interested in providing a set of radios you might have a family you're trying to buy radios for to make sure that your family unit is good to go you might have some friends and neighbors who you might want to purchase radios for or you might have a group of buddies who are trying to get together and buy radios as like a group so that you all are on the same page with things and the convenience factor is something you have to consider if you get a really expensive radio that nobody wants to use because it's inconvenient or they don't know how to use it well you know that's probably a little bit of a waste whereas you could go with a slightly less ideal radio setup but it's a lot more convenient for people to use or more durable or something like that so this is something to consider when you're trying to pick out what kind of radios to use so when we add all of this stuff together really our goal is to pick the best practices from all of the stuff we've talked about and implement it as best you can but let me tell you something the coolest dudes on the internet still haven't figured this out the super secret tier 1 ranger sniper delta seals still do not have ways of meeting all of these criteria at the same time but on the civilian side of things when it comes to ensuring the survivability and the utility of your communications networks and implementing this into your daily life not just on the weekends when you go to the range this is going to give you capabilities when others even the us government does not have those capabilities i know we dedicate a lot of time to talking capabilities and i guess we can only beat this into people's heads so much but i'm asking you please please please at least try to figure out this kind of stuff for yourself i'm pleading with you to pay attention to the boring stuff such as communications because communications is a great equalizer just like weather communications has historically been the reason for both resounding success and the abysmal failure of military operations around the world i know this stuff is boring and sometimes hard to understand i get it i really do my own brain is not wired to understand most of the stuff either and we here can try to help with the complex nature of this stuff by helping make things a little easier to understand but these days we are facing diminishing returns when it comes to trying to convince people to pay attention to the stuff that isn't entertaining if it isn't a video about a rifle or play carrier people just turn it off if it isn't entertaining people don't want to watch it this mentality has got to stop we are not going to make it out of these tough times unless we start reading books and learning skills that aren't just confined to the cool stuff in the tactical arena so let's do that if our youtube analytics are any indicator if you made it this far into the video on this topic you are already ahead of the curve if you're listening to this you are the resistance the people who need to watch this video in its entirety the people that we are pleading with to start learning skills are the people who clicked out of this video right at the beginning when they realized it wasn't going to be entertaining so congratulations you were already on your way to figuring out which path you need to take when it comes to your own communications for us this is not a game this is not a hobby this is an attempt to use one of the only existing technologies that humanity has in order to ensure that we have basic capabilities when powerful companies and or nation states decide they don't want us to communicate the past two years have strongly indicated that internet and cellular communications are not reliable cellular communications are not reliable due to everything from censorship to mass surveillance and internet-based communications well not only is that more vulnerable than we think from everything from recreational vehicle owners to russian submarines but the entire concept of the internet the very core and basic levels of how packets of data are sent and received has in our opinion been corrupted to the point that investing time and effort into new internet-based communications is not exactly a feasible enterprise we have gotten a taste of this in recent years it doesn't matter how secure your communications method is it doesn't matter how great your new social media app is if your entire domain can be delisted by the one or two companies that own the majority of internet traffic investing time to research and develop out our own independent communications networks from the ground up is in our opinion a much more worthwhile venture at this stage and the field of radio is really one of the only options that exists we believe that we as a people can do this but the biggest barrier like everything else in life is ourselves we have got to force ourselves to choke down this information and understand it ever wonder how social media companies now control the majority of communication and information in the world ever wonder how they did that because they had the technical knowledge and we did not so let's change that let's become experts on this stuff and build our own communications networks sure spending 19 hours on youtube watching videos about guns you don't even own is perfectly fine if that's what you want to do but you know what else is cool being strategically and tactically superior in the fields that are boring if even the highest tiers of special operators can't even fill their own radio and just get their echo to do it but you as a private citizen can set up your own extensive covert networks and bounce radio signals around like its child's play you will run circles around any adversary you might face so if you can do all of this and still say what you want to say and say it to only the people who you want to hear it well then you're going to be a very very capable force and finally when it comes to the eternal question that will surely be asked what radio do i need to buy that will enable me to meet all of these criteria the answer that i'm sure everyone is tired of hearing is it depends there is no one radio that can fulfill all of these criteria but you can get really close so this is going to require its own video on the topic right now there aren't too many options out there for people who want to use radios like we do so we can cover this in a separate video because it can get really confusing and technical really quickly so stay tuned for that but in the meantime if you do not have a radio just yet you can learn the internet with all of its faults is still a great place for learning new skills and recently there has been a lot of content within the field of ham radio that you can use to help understand basic principles and try to figure out what you will need to meet the criteria that matters to you so stay tuned for more on this infinitely large topic and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so what if i were to tell you that a century-old technology could actually be quite useful when it comes to navigating through the world of mass surveillance and censorship that we find ourselves living in today the answer to that question is field telephones which is what we're going to be talking about today so a lot of people might be wondering why we're talking about a technology that is well over 100 years old and is in fact in museums in a lot of places right it's not very often that you want to you know surf ebay to find essentially what would be a museum relic and use that as one of your communications methods well here's exactly why you might want to do just that so we find ourselves at the end of 2020 moving into 2021 we find ourselves moving into a new age of surveillance and we're not talking just the typical you know governmental surveillance that everybody's become numb to now we find ourselves moving into an era of corporate surveillance you know you know facebook twitter social media in general spying on you uh not just for ads but to see what you're thinking and then if they don't like what you're thinking they're going to censor what you're posting so we've gotten a lot of messages from people over the past few months really since the election of people who say hey look you know i don't post anything political on my facebook page i don't post anything political on twitter i don't like or follow anything remotely political and yet my account was deleted based on political radicalism you know that doesn't make any sense so one of the things that that is coming out and is becoming readily apparent is that social media and particularly a lot of these private companies are spying on people and censoring people far more accurately far more personally than governmental forces could ever imagine so one of the ways that we're trying to move forward in this new era is trying to figure out how to get around that so one of the ways that we we tried getting around it is with things like ham radio and you know peer-to-peer you know uh decentralized social media things like that things that we're actively working on but we also found another way and this method is particularly useful in cases where you're trying to send a very short message from say your house to say your neighbor's house it's like either right next door across the street or something like that if you're trying to send a short message that's you know maybe a sentence or two back and forth you know just to check up on things you know just say hey you know have you seen anything stuff like that if you have a short message like that you don't necessarily want to be beaming it out of your house right you don't want to necessarily be using it in with you know like either a ham radio which is in a lot of cases going to require license and if it doesn't require a license it's still broadcasting an open signal throughout the airwaves right so anyone who's listening in can listen to what you're saying and you know you could you know use code words and things like that but that requires a lot of effort right and if we're going to be you know try to branch out we don't want to specialize so much on a lot of this technology we want to be able to simplify it right to get more people on it i would much rather have 10 people on my communications network that don't really know much about communications than to have one person on my communications network who's an expert right so keeping that in mind we have a lot of criteria and one of those criteria is to not use cloud type services because news flash for everybody out there there's no such thing as the cloud it's all just a server on somebody else's property so that's why we wanted to avoid things like you know texting texting can be picked up by a dirt box flying over a city we don't want that you know things like emails well that's going through a server somewhere and i guarantee you it's not your server you know things like secure messaging apps and things like that like whatsapp and signal and key base those are great and they are secure but at the same time they are they're they're totally reliant on the internets what if the internet goes down what if this you know the particular app gets bought out by somebody else right so that's one of the huge considerations that we're trying to make sure that if we're going to invest in a system it's going to have to be foolproof right to some certain degree and in this particular example which is what we're talking about these small short range point-to-point communications a single uh telephone wire you know stretched between two field telephones one in your house one in your neighbor's house might actually be uh fit to build quite well the only vulnerabilities that come from the the field telephone setup are the actual wire itself so anybody who's on the wire or can tap into the wire can hear what you're saying but if that wire is hidden to where no one can find it you've got a pretty secure communication system right you know even the best hackers in the world even the best spy tools and things like that they can't get your information if they can't find it right so if the wire is hidden pretty well you're going to have a very secure communications plan and moving on to the sort of criteria that we were looking at we wanted the system to be analog we didn't want a digital type system that is vulnerable to the normal things that digital systems are you know vulnerable to we wanted something that's very you know very caveman very barney style very durable very long lasting and the systems on planet earth that tend to be to fit those bills are analog they're not necessarily a digital type system we have a plethora of digital type systems for communicating let me download our com card it's almost all digital communication systems but the point is that we also wanted an analog method that is you know fits these other criteria as well so one of the other ways that we want one of the other criterias we wanted was that it doesn't transmit any signal we wanted nothing going through the air that could be listened to and heard by somebody because you know it's not like you know for most of us here it's not like anybody's sitting out there with a scanner listening to our vhf radio traffic right no there's not very people not very many governmental agencies even capable of doing that much less doing it but there are other people and we don't want to be direction found by you know transmitting a short two-second message to somebody else who's across the yard from us you know we don't want to do that if we can avoid you transmitting right we want to practice m-con emissions control right we don't want to emit anything if we don't have to we also wanted the system to have very little power draw or preferably no power at all so these sound power telephones the sound powered ones are they don't require any batteries at all they will work without any power whatsoever because they generate it themselves whereas most field telephones require at least a couple of batteries which are good but you know we would prefer something that has that requires no power at all and certainly nothing that plugs into a wall if it plugs into a wall outlet or requires a router to be turned on or if it requires a cell tower to have power to it that's a no go we didn't want that we wanted to be able to create the infrastructure ourselves and use it because we know it's more reliable we also it's sort of a this is a minor one minor criteria but we also wanted a system that is emp slash cme coronal mass ejection hardened you know i think as we've learned from recent you know sort of solar events that have come you know reignited a lot of the you know coronal mass ejection slash emp vulnerabilities of our systems you know the fact of the matter is is that we i i can't quite speak intelligently on this because i'm not a scientist but i do believe that most scientists sort of agree that we're starting we're beginning the start of another solar cycle so we're going to start seeing a lot more solar activity and things like that so we wanted a system that is not just prepared for you know nuclear annihilation right we want something that is more hardened against something that's far more likely like us coronal mass ejection right we we have learned that you know even though these events are rare they can happen and they can happen very very quickly so we wanted something that's naturally hardened against that and the the field telephone system is naturally hardened against all sort of electromagnetic interference right it cannot be affected by electromagnetic interference which is what we really wanted we also wanted something that is completely impervious to jamming like you can jam all day long and it's not going to stop a field telephone so which is unlike things like bowel things you can jam someone with a balafang with another bow thing right if you have a bow thing and someone's transmitting on one watt and you crank your barfing up to five watts and transmit on the same frequency and guess what you just did you jammed them so we're starting to see that riders and looters are starting to use handheld radios for communication much like a lot of insurgent groups do overseas so we're starting to see that and we're starting to see people you know jam them by hot miking over them so of course this is not really a huge concern for most people there's only a couple of cases in the whole country of this happening but it's a future it's the future of what's going to happen that's what we think so we wanted something that is if we're going to invest in something we'll want to make sure that we don't have to retrofit it five years down the line when everybody and their cousin has a valve thing and they're jamming each other we wanted something that is naturally impervious to it from the start and then lastly we also wanted something that is the whole system had to be simple and cheap and fortunately for us field telephones are the simplest form of technology out there in the world today with the exception of maybe semaphore and morse code they are very uh they're the simplest form of of relatively long distance um voice communication out there and they're really cheap they're not as cheap as they used to be but you can get into field telephones for quite cheap we'll talk about that in a minute so a lot of people get turned off from the concept of sound powered telephones or field telephones because they think it's an ancient technology they think it's it's simply because it was around during world war ii and even world war one they think that because it was around during those times that it's now obsolete that could not be further from the truth right in fact a lot of modern groups have learned a lot the importance of having some power telephones and no group out there has learned the importance of these field telephones more than the us navy so so the united states navy uh sort of got a black eye from the the attack on the uss cole because uh one of the main takeaways from the subsequent investigations was the lack of communication so the insurgents the terrorist bomb blew a hole right into a few compartments and one of the it just so happened that the compartments that were affected and blown to some of the rings and flooded were things like the communications compartment where a lot of internal shipboard communications were and also where a lot of power switching stations were so in short what happened was the bomb blew a hole in the ship and the ship lost power for about three weeks so three weeks afterwards um even you know weeks afterwards the crew was still using they were using during the disaster and as far as you know several weeks after they were using handheld uh you know like motorola radios right because all communications on the ship were you know essentially destroyed and they learned their lesson from that and moving on to another more recent attack the united states navy again had learned had to learn their lesson when it comes to sound powered telephones so on the uss fitzgerald during their you know collision incident on 17 june 2017 they also learned the importance because when they when that ship rammed them they uh one of the main things that went down were communications and power it's almost like they hit yet again one of the most vulnerable parts of the ship which was where the sailors were sleeping where you know the communications were routed through and where power was routed through so the ship lost power and lost communications and they had you know people in trouble and all that kind of stuff so it was a disaster scenario of one of the worst kind really and once again sound power telephones made their debut again because the ship had lost power and the only things that worked were those handheld radios and the sound powered telephones so the united states navy has learned their lesson multiple times when it comes to sound powered telephones on board ships so it's definitely not a technology that is you know ancient or obsolete so now we arrive at the phones that we use and we actually use what is one of the least favorable in the you know collector community phones called the ta1 the ta1 is a sound powered telephone and like i said it's not very favorable because it has no batteries most field telephones take actual batteries but we use the ta-1 because it doesn't require them and we're not exactly concerned about transmitting over a long distance right the ta1 is also very much more lightweight than the ta-312 it's a lot smaller so you can put it in a lot more areas and it's a lot it looks on the surface of it a lot simpler to use it also has options right built right into the receiver of the the phone to you know turn the ringer off so that if you're in like an observation post or something you don't want you know a telephone ringing to give your position away so it has a little visual dial that lets you know you're getting a phone call so that's you know all these criteria add up to make the ta-1 a very good option for us so what we our normal setup and how these sort of sound power telephones work is you take one telephone you take another telephone and you stretch a wire between them it's a double stranded wire so you have you know two terminals on each phone and uh you know double stranded wire between the two and you'd think that it's basically just a really high-tech version of the tin can and strings sort of toy that you know children use and you'd be right the only real difference is the quality of the phone call and the fact that the range on this particular phone from ta1 to ta1 is about four miles with standard you know field wire now if you had the resources money time effort and well really desire to stretch out more wire you could upgrade to like i mentioned the main field telephone that the us forces have used since really vietnam which is the ta-312 or the earlier variant which is a ta-43 but they're essentially the same phone the ta-312 is a little different it takes batteries it still has a mechanical ringer and everything but the difference is is that once you put batteries in it to amplify the signal now you're increasing your range to 24 miles roughly uh with the same amount with the same you know wire standard wd1 field wire and that is that is significant see a lot of people think that these fuel telephones they go like 100 yards or so no no these field telephones go you know miles and miles and miles and miles and miles so those are the two sort of main us phones that you can find on the internet now if you wanted to branch out you could also find foreign phones like for instance we use the we use the swedish fuel telephones as well as the russian field telephones here as well they're essentially all the same technology the only difference is the ringer devices on them are different and you know they all take d batteries so you know you can get rechargeable d batteries that work with those as well so if you wanted to you know have rechargeables that works as well and the battery drain is very very very low you can talk for hours and hours and hours and you would not uh you would not eat up the batteries in in the slightest i would say though that the foreign field telephones are a little bit cheaper you can tend to get them pretty pretty cheap you can get i think the swedish variant is still on sportsman's guide um as of late uh 2020 um and the russian ones can be found all over ebay and things like that you can find these on ebay just you know search for a field telephone on ebay and you'll be able to find a lot of these and you know i hate to quote a price on a video that's probably going to be around for you know many years but right now the current price for these is um a ta-312 costs around maybe 100 bucks or so if you could find one i think i think it's usually around 80 or so and then there's about 20 bucks of shipping put on top of that and then the russian variant and the swedish variant go from anywhere from depending on the quality you know 50 bucks a piece to a hundred bucks a piece and sometimes you can get a set so like what we did was we jumped on a surplus website and got a a couple of pairs of these swedish telephones for i think 60 bucks for two so it ended up being 30 bucks a piece with free shipping so that was a great deal um so yeah you can find these field telephones everywhere and it's it's kind of interesting because like the swedish phones that we have were actually developed you know slightly after world war ii so quite literally we're using a military field telephone from you know a conflict from the 40s here in the year you know 2020. so very interesting and uh if you're a history buff these would be you know kind of a more of a a cool thing for you to get but also it has a very very useful function so before moving on i did want to mention that the reason that the ta1 is not very well liked is because it doesn't work with the ta-312 so the ta ones were mostly used as like short-range you know um phones for like observation posts you know just like 100 yards that way right put it to take a ta-1 with you and string out some wire or they were used to test test connections between lines because they were very you know small and easy to carry but they do not work with the ta-312s however i have noticed and some of our guys here have reported that they do work with field telephones from other countries so the ta-312 will talk with every other country's field telephone and the ta-1 will also work with every other country's field telephone that we have found but they will not work together which is interesting the ta-312 and the ta-1 do not work together which is interesting but you know you can set up very interesting networks uh that way so i just wanted to point that out if you're trying to buy a field telephone and you see a bunch of ones on ebay i personally prefer the the field telephones field telephones from other countries because they tend to be a little bit cheaper they tend to be and they work with the ta ones which is what we use you know throughout our you know setup here so another thing that's very fascinating if you're into you know science and how radio waves work and how electricity works is a concept that was come up with during world war one and you gotta remember during world war one there really wasn't anything you know like uh double-stranded wire it literally it was wire which was covered with rubber if you're lucky or cloth in most cases you know we're going back to the very beginning of the electrical field really so what they figured out was normally you have a field telephone in this first location and you have a field field telephone located in another location and you need two wires to string between them so one wire per terminal for the field telephones to complete the circuit you can't just do it with one wire so what they figured out was that you could actually get rid of that second wire and instead of the second wire you could actually use the earth's crust as a return wire so this is called earth return technology and what soldiers would do is they would take either specially made stakes made for this or they would take their bayonet which is very common as well and they would hook one lead to the bayonet and shove it in the ground and the other guy at the other end of the line would do the same thing so that way you only had to stretch one strand of wire and this also meant that you could effectively double the length of wire that you had because you only needed one wire between points you could take the that second strand and tie you know um sort of tie it together because back in the day wires were actually tied with knots they weren't actually you know twisted together like normal stranded wire we have today actually tied together like string and you could effectively double the range and uh the way this would work is the signal would go um this is the animation here is kind of backwards on the youtube video sorry for those of you who are watching but the um this signal would actually go down the line and be returned via the ground the stake in the ground so it actually works we've tried this out here in the shop and most importantly we've tried it out using magnet wire now magna wire is fascinating because this is a brand new technology that well it's not really brand new but it's a you know we now in you know the 21st century have the capability of producing really really thin wire you know thinner than a 16 of an inch wire and we can put a lot of it on a spool so you know like right here i've got a spool of wire which is not even sold by length it's sold by weight but it just so happens that it weighs about two pounds and it is a little over a mile of wire that's amazing you know and it's a small little you know four inch roll of wire so literally i can put a ta-1 in my backpack i can put a little over a mile of wire in my backpack and i could take my you know bayonet or knife and that would be the connection so literally all i would have to do is hop on the back of a motorcycle or something like that or even just run and or walk you know spooling out this single strand of really really thin wire if i had to right and uh once i get to the end i don't need to do it again to string that second wire i could you know just stick a stake in the ground and have the other guy do it on the other end of the line and there's my connection so that's a fascinating technology now of course there are downsides it's not extremely long range we're talking just you know a couple of miles here not you know 10 and 20 miles like on some other field telephones and of course it doesn't work in sand so if there's a patch of sand like a patch of sandy ground between you but you know between you and the other station it's not going to work you have to bridge over it which you know you can go look up vintage uh you know handbooks and training manuals on how to do this but uh yeah it's a fascinating technology that not a lot of people know about and this is you know you know like i said over a hundred years old which is just a fascinating part of it and you know like here like we were showing on the youtube video for those of you watching us on youtube um you know the soldiers using bayonets is very very was very very common um you know even these are german soldiers and the british soldiers invented it so it's very very interesting that this old uh technology is still useful today and not just useful but like really useful in the concept of or in the context of what we're dealing with in society today now of course it would not be a sort of s2 underground video without talking about the cons of this product right there there is a reason that you know militaries don't use field telephones anymore for the most part a lot of uh interestingly enough a lot of armies and militaries in europe still do for like guard shacks and things like that but there's a reason we don't send out dudes like you know on the slide here with you know backpacks of reels of wire it's because it's horrifically dangerous um in a war in wartime scenario your wire layer is a huge target because communications are always an issue and it's usually got a pretty good uh identifying feature of this big spool of wire on his back for you to you know easily be shot at so you know laying wire in a combat scenario is extraordinarily dangerous which is why we got away from it when it comes to you know once um radio technology got to the point of where it was able to be secured and long distance and reliable would you know wire uh feel a telephone sort of went away and you know put in context of you know the civilian you know market you know wire laying is dangerous in wartime but it's suspicious in peace time you know in some areas you're not going to be able to lay wire without some neighbor you know who isn't in on what's going on you know gets you know you call either calls the police on you or something like that now for those of you who live in a more rural area not so much a concern but for for our guys that live in cities and this is going to be kind of a harder thing to do because you can't exactly you know lay wire over roads or anything like that you have to lay them through culverts and things like that so depending on your scenario this might not be an option at all um especially running wire outside your house now you could run a line you know inside your house you know from your front door to your back door all day long and nobody nobody would really care or even know about it but if you're trying to do it outside it's a little bit more of a concern so um just keep that in mind is that it's not necessarily a foolproof option for a lot of people but it is just another piece of the puzzle so if this is your you know ideal communications network um you know field telephones and you know laying wire for field telephones definitely has a place um in in our scenario here we're talking about neighbor to neighbor communication right and it's not just something that you know a couple of your neighbors can do if you have a lot of neighbors if you are lucky enough to live in an area where you're on very good terms very friend you know very friendly with your neighbors um then you might have a better option you might be able to create a lot more a lot more of a community preparedness mindset right so you could have you know a neighbor who has like this you know on this slide here a listening post observation post an lpop right in their attic which is nothing more than just a uh a a so you know a chair at a window right it doesn't have to be anything specific or you know grandiose right you could just have this sort of lpop there which covers you know this part of the road and then you know another neighbor at the under the street could have the same thing facing the other way so you monitor traffic in and out of your area if an emergency occurs uh you could also have a house with that has you know dedicated supplies or you know maybe a community building where everybody you know which is a shelter for people right you could also have you know your local ham radio operator because every community especially in a rural area has got that one guy who loves ham radio and he's got those gigantic antennas and that guy is probably going to know what the heck is going on a lot more a lot sooner than a lot of other people might in your community you might have a neighbor or you know who's maybe elderly or shut in and and can't uh can't provide for themselves so much they might need some assistance during an emergency you also might have a neighbor who has you know like a child with diabetes or something like that and therefore needs their insulin to be refrigerated you know things like that um can be very very helpful to have them you know all connected on a network you know if you want to be an asset to your community this can be very very helpful and if you're saying if you're thinking well you know there's ways to do that you can have you know handheld radios that you can give to all your neighbors and things like that and that's good you know you can go out you know with like your cert team and distribute things you know you can go door to door make sure your neighbors are okay that is perfect but what we're finding out in 2020 and what we're going to be you know learning the hard way in 2021 is that we might not have the luxury of leaving our own home we might not have the luxury of going out and helping our neighbors because we've got either private citizens going out there and and sort of you know goons squatting each other up uh for not wearing masks on sidewalks or things like that we might have you know like in the case of australia the military and police literally locking people in their own homes and not letting them out without special permits you know this is not being pessimistic this is being realistic as to what might happen in the united states so if you take the time to create your network ahead of time you could have a pretty good system of community watch a system that is able to take care of anyone moving in and around your neighborhood and nobody has to leave their homes to do so so that is a good thing to have you always want a community watch system to be as effective as it is it can be and if you set up a good party line for all this you could even have you know community uh community messages and you know you could even hold church services over a field telephone wire from house to house to house um and no one would ever know about it no one could spy on you no no technology like you know facetime or or zoom is going to be spying on you and recording what you say it's all your own network because you created the network and it's your infrastructure so that's why we wanted to talk about field telephones because it's a very vital communications method it might not work for everybody but it's sure going to work for some and we wanted to bring it up and mention it because we think that not a whole lot of people know about this technology and talk about it so that's why we wanted to talk about it today so let us know what you think make sure that you you know like comment subscribe uh check out our other content i we're going to host this video on our lbry page our library page for those of you that don't know so that it doesn't get censored or taken down we're also going to take the audio from this and put it on our podcast for those of you who like our podcast and we will also have lots more resources on our key base so join the discussion there if you want to learn more about this sort of technology so thank you for tuning in to this uh to this episode and we will see you next time and always remember to find the shade s2 actual out

[Music] hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so today we're going to be taking a look at atac or more specifically wintac and how you can use it to plan missions so as you can probably guess atac is a very useful platform and it can do a lot of things in fact it can do so many things that people have a hard time trying to contextualize and sort of understand exactly what atac can do so today we're going to be running through a fictitious scenario and showing how atac can be a valuable mission asset in the civilian world as well so we're really not going to go over any one particular feature today we're just going to be playing around and messing around with wintec and showing you some of the different things that it can do attacking or wintec in this case is not perfect in fact atac the whole tack family of products wintac is is by far the the most undesirable in the atac community because it has a lot of issues and it's not really a priority for development it's not quite as as gucci as the atac apps however we find that using wintac for mission planning is pretty useful considering that you have the power of a pc computer and you can use a mouse and other things as well you can it's not it's easier to do things on a laptop than on a phone so let's uh let's go through our fictitious mission scenario all right so exercise exercise exercise all that jazz mission scenario you have received reporting through local information sources that unknown aircraft have been staging at your local airport intelligence reported through your human networks indicates that the aircraft are staging at the airport with more aircraft arriving periodically your mission is to establish a covert observation post from which a rotating team can observe aircraft landing at the airport once the covert observation post is complete your task is to conduct visual reconnaissance of the airport as well as any aircraft landing or taking off you are required to log every aircraft that may be on the ground and where they are parked reporting back sitreps every hour you are responsible for your own support there will be no chance of aerial resupply and ground-based resupply will not be guaranteed as a result you are responsible for all mission planning and have nearly unlimited leeway for how you complete this mission so yeah in the civilian world this might be all of the information that you get no formal pirs no eeis your entire intelligence collection mission might result from a five minute phone call or a text message exchange and it's your job to organize plan and carry out the mission you do not have a battle staff to help you you will usually be on your own so for all of the real military and government analysts out there please keep this in mind as we're going through this we're looking at this through the lens of the civilian world and as such we do have a few assumed factors for this exercise to make it a little bit more easy in the training environment for one the weather we will assume a broken cloud ceiling at 15 000 feet msl above mean sea level that will move into a full overcast ceiling by the time we sp or hit the start point precipitation is not expected during the duration of this mission the elevation of the airport is right at around 5700 feet so that means that as we're standing on the ground we're going to have about 9 300 feet of clear air space over our heads this is good for evading detection for unmanned aerial systems that won't be able to fly down below the cloud ceiling so really we're just looking at terrain masking from terrestrial collection efforts if there are any and as far as electronic surveillance we're going to assume that cell phone stingrays will be operational in nearby city and that aircraft landing in the airport might have like gilgamesh boxes or dirt boxes on board as well and on the counter surveillance front we're going to assume that limited counter surveillance efforts will be conducted but they will be limited to the immediate perimeter of the airport so that's pretty much it just a quick and dirty hey let's go figure out what's going on over there type mission all right so here we are in wintec so also just for simplicity's sake and to avoid a lot of the frustration that comes with a an online imagery source i have go i've went ahead and downloaded to my computer imagery for this area so in this green box here it's already pre-loaded so we're going to first the first thing we're going to do is load in our sort of target right we're not actually connecting targeting here but we need somewhere to to uh to go off so we're going to go up here to the top left click import manager and import files because lucky enough our source gave us a kmz so as you see i already have a few here but i'm going to click this one and that's going to be it it's going to take a minute to load okay thank you import manager so let's go over here to our overlays see it kind of glitched out for a second all right here we go let's see file overlays we've got kml loaded in there and as you can see we have our target airport kmz and that's it there's only one point in there see this is what happens when you're in the sort of civilian world you're not going to get a full pir list and it's not going to be specific you might just get a grid and that's it so uh just as a side note i've got another one loaded in here just from messing around a little bit but so if you wanted to delete another one just to make things more simple you go up here select it and delete and that'll delete it so now really we've only got this 1kml file is one target right there and that zooms it to it so uh when i'm looking at this airport i'm looking at it looks like a fairly civilian style airport right nothing super duper special about it i did choose this location randomly this airport has really no major significance i only picked it because uh it has a lot of good terrain nearby so that we could use our 3d functionality in wintec pretty well so i just picked it because it it will allow us to check that out a little easier all right so the first thing i want to do is figure out where i'm going to put my lpop and as you remember one of the very few requirements of this mission is to be able to see the runway be able to see the parking zones uh see aircraft on the tarmac and be able to identify them so we need to be close enough to figure that out but we also need to be close enough or further far enough away to where we're going to avoid that counter surveillance and avoid that stingray electronic surveillance down here to the southeast and they said in the urban area so what we're going to do is i'm just just looking at this i can look and say all right cool it looks like there's a mountain range here this is more of a valley floor here i'm going to guess that my recon site is going to be up in this area somewhere this is just me looking down at it on the map but let's be absolutely sure so what we're going to do to figure out what you can see [Music] from the ground we're going to do what's called a view shed now a lot of people tend to sort of explain the view shed a little bit wonky but it's actually quite simple so let me go ahead and zoom in here to what i want to be able to see from far away and let's go ahead and zoom in here today to the aircraft parking area so what i'm going to want to do is go to elevation tools let that load for just a second now on your computer of course this will be much faster the only reason that it slows because i'm not using a terribly good computer for this and the screen recording software takes a lot of a lot of cpu power so once we've got elevation tools opened up here we have three menus at the top we're going to click view shed and what we're going to do is uh set our height above marker at five feet we're just going to leave that there i'll explain what that means in a minute just remember that it is set at five feet now we're going to set our radius to be something quite big in this case 15 kilometers and we're going to keep the intensity at right around 40 or so we'll show you what that means in a minute but basically the 40 is just to make sure that you can still see the ground you can do 100 then you won't be able to see anything but um next we're going to select the marker so we're going to click this button right here as you can see right here on the map you see tap a marker or location on the map pretty simple we're just going to click on the map so this is a view shed i'm going to go ahead and exit out for just a second i'll show you what this means and the way view sheds work is if you are a five foot person or in this case a five foot target uh standing at this little eyeball symbol you can see everything in green there's clear line of sight to everything in the green everything in red you can't see so as if we go ahead and and tilt the map a little bit you can see that obviously the low-lying areas are in red because you're probably obscured by things like buildings and other terrain features but if you look upwards towards the more higher terrain you can see obviously this mountain here you can you'll be able to see and then over here you won't uh you won't be able to see that from the ground because you come up over this ridge so this is very handy this allows you to more easily select and figure out a good site to go from so this is of course one of many tools and the reason that i set this at 15k you know obviously it's obviously not ideal to be able to surveil a target from you know 10 miles away or so but this just shows the function so let me go ahead and pick a good spot and we'll come back to this in just a second all right so i've got a good spot picked out and what i'm going to do is turn off the view shed for just a second so i'm going to open up my elevation tools again go over here and click remove view shed and we will come back to that in just a second and let me turn on the point that i found by going to overlays let that load for just a second yeah it's really slow here let's go to spot spot marker there we go and that's the place i found so this is just you know of course a good training exercise right so as you can see it's here let me go ahead and tilt the map for you a little bit if it doesn't want to freeze up on me there we go so you see it's right here up on this hill um it's got not a whole lot of cover there um but we'll we're not really so much concerned about that right now are we so um yeah this is a decently good spot it's right up there on the ridge line honestly i would probably move it down so that you could move it down to like the military crest here so you're not silhouetted against the ridgeline there but whatever this works for training exercises so what i'm going to do is tilt this back north and we're going to do another view just to make absolutely certain that this spot can see the target and it gives us some ideas of what this place can see so let's go over to view shed we'll do it 15k again five feet above marker so a five foot person standing at this point right here i'm gonna do it a little bit down the hill a little ways and let's go ahead select the marker and click right there that should give us on this side of the ridge and yeah that's a pretty good once i zoom out here that's a pretty good view shed so as you can see if i'm if i'm a five foot person or sitting in a five foot above the ground level position at that little eyeball i can see the entirety of the target this position is not too bad it gives me good command of the a good portion of the valley a good portion of the city down here as well but then it also is right there on that ridge line right there on that edge of being able to pop back over pop back into the red and not be have direct line of sight to the target which is always a good thing just in case right so this looks like a pretty good site now of course we could do a lot of other videos selecting this sort of thing but this is really just to show the the uh the features of atac so let's say that this is the site i want so let me go ahead and turn off or actually let me leave the view shed on i was going to turn it off but let me let me go ahead and put some contour lines on the map here in the elevation tools as well let me show the lines i'm going to leave them as this sort of orangish color let me let me make them yellow actually so you can see them a little better so yeah this does confirm to me that yup i'm right there on that nice ridge line it looks like it does get a little steeper over here and it's a nice sloping downhill area and then there's another valley over here looks like a looks like a box canyon or something going up this way yeah there's a lot of different a lot of different stuff going on here so i'm going to go ahead and turn those contour lines back off and i'm going to go to my view shed and turn my view shed off i'm going to turn the heat map on just to just play around a little bit show you what the heat map is this shows you the high spots are red low spots are blue as you can see that shows you how that works not as not as ideal and obviously the more you zoom in the more detail you're gonna get but it's heat maps are not really a good thing unless you're building a product or product or something like that all right so let's turn that heat map off and let's let's get out of this and let's say that we need to get to this site obviously right we need to get there somehow so i'm going to start looking around and let's say that i am going to find a good spot to park let's see here i found one earlier when i was just messing around i think this one's it yeah so this is a good looks like a good two-track road but just in case we want to verify that that road is wide enough for a vehicle to get down let's go ahead and go to the range and bearing up here at the top left and then we can click measure and then we can click and drag to measure there we go and then once we sorry hang on things hang up just a second we could tell a lot of stuff about it we could open up the metadata over here once it loads and it will tell us that that is 13 feet across or 4 meters or 0.00 nautical miles right and which what bearing it's along as well and mills as well if you need that sort of thing so that's that's kind of handy to have so this tells us that road is in fact 13 feet across and that is more than enough for us so let's go ahead let's go ahead and cancel that and we will delete that as well all right so we're going to let's say that we want to park right here um just me looking at this map just from not really being familiar to all this area it looks like a pretty well used especially well used for considering how remote this area is and the elevation profile this area is insane but it looks like there's a nice little maybe a little stream dry riverbed right there so let's go ahead and say we're going to park right here so what we're going to do is i know i skipped right over dropping a point so i'll show you how to drop a point right now using the point dropper let that load for just a second all right so over here on the point dropper this is the kind of cool part you have a lot of different icons and stuff that you can use so we're just going to use the spot map for a while these are just different colored dots all right different colored dots that you can put on the map we're going to use green for now so let's say that i want to use this road for infill and then break off and hide a vehicle or something let's say let's try right about there all right so let's go ahead that comes across as g1 it automatically named labels it green one right so let's go ahead and change that name to vdo vehicle dismount operations this is where we're going to park our vehicle and get out and start walking alright so if we want to do that what we can do is we can use attack to figure out the best way to get up there so let's say that you can see this is kind of a good distance away here let's see how far it is via as the crow flies all right looks like 3 750 feet right so let's put that in kilometers yep so a little over a k right so that's as the crow flies and as you can see that is going to be a very if we were to walk straight there that's going to be a pretty significant elevation change and handy for us right here on the range and bearing page at the bottom right you can click elevation profile and this is an interesting tool this is one of the more interesting things and more useful things that atac does it will tell you over a period of distance how uh how much elevation gain you're going to have so as you can see here the elevation gain or loss in this case since we we did it from the the point down to here instead of from the video up to the point it's 460 feet of elevation change so that's not insignificant especially if you're carrying like a hundred pound rook or something like that and a lot of equipment you could see along where this elevation change goes uh just by clicking and dragging like that so this shows you at what point the elevation is at and we'll cover this this tool a lot more in a separate video but let's say that i don't want to um i don't want to go along this this straight route i want to want to take my time and i want to come up come up this hill here and then take this ridge line down we're going to do this a few times so don't worry so let's go to making a route we want to have a route so that we can follow it right so let's wait for this to load click routes up here and then we're going to add a new route and we're going to make this route we'll call this route yellow and it will be a walking route it will be an infill and it will be our primary and it will be ascending right so let's start dropping points as you can see then once i clicked okay over here we now have this nifty thing up here on our toolbar and we can start making points so uh the vdo is now our point one right so let's keep going over here and then i'm going to use my keyboard here the wasd keys will allow you to move this sideways and also your arrow keys so whatever's more comfortable for you for me it's wasd because i'm right-handed using the mouse with my right hand and use you know wasd with my left so let's see here let's go ahead and follow follow up keeping some cover down right make sure that i'm not really taking too much effort into this this is going to be if i was really going to do this for real i would take a lot more time and effort using that elevation tool to sort of follow the contours up you know just like any other hiking trip really alright so we're up here at the top of this ridge say i don't want to go to the very top of the ridge i want to maintain that military crest back down here so i click and drag these points so that we're on we're out of visual range of the target and then we're going to continue down this ridge line more or less staying out of the view of the target probably should have left on the view shed down there at the target for for now but whatever all right we're going to follow this all the way down all the way down all the way down and then we pop up over the ridge line and we are there so there you go that's how you make a route in wintec or atac then we're going to click end editing and it's going to be right there so let's go ahead and zoom out and we'll look at this all right so that's our pretty that's our good route right there and it will show us what we see along the way so if you have multiple points along the way you can add in points as well but say i wanted to do another one say i wanted to to take a little bit more indirect route or i wanted an alternate route back to the vehicle in case i get compromised or something you always wanted an alternate route so let's go ahead and make a new route we're going to make this route let's see here what do you guys think let's just do blue it will be again a walking route and this will be infill and it will be secondary and okay let's go ahead and drive this one again let's let's go this way this time now usually you want to have different infills on different uh different sides of the objectives that you can come from different angles if you need be depending on which way the wind's blowing all that kind of stuff but i say we take the lower route and then we we just kind of hump it up over this hill here which is going to be a pretty good elevation change for us and there we go just for simplicity's sake we'll make it easy there we go all right so we've got two different routes for infill we could use these for xfil we could change them whatever whatever you wanted to do that's how you make routes and the cool part is is that say i was trying to choose between these two what i could do is go over here to the route details and click elevation profile and it will tell me how hard that trip will be as you can see grab our slider over here it's going to be not a whole lot of elevation gain a lot of elevation gain and then here at the end it sort of sort of goes up as we pop up over that hill so that's kind of interesting it's really helpful for planning hiking routes um a lot of other stuff as well so let's go ahead and and choose let me choose let me do the same thing with uh route yellow here do the elevation tool again and we'll see oh the elevator tool is still locked on the other one sorry hang on just a second route two we're gonna change this to route let's see route yellow just for simplicity's sake let's take that elevation route again let's see what we got here so this one it looks like you actually go downhill for a good amount of time for a little bit and you start coming up and then it's a slow steady incline this one looks like it's a lot harsher actually but then once you're up there on top of that ridge as you can see it levels out pretty good for the rest of the way so this one might be advantageous for some things depending on what you're trying to do you know if you find that you you'd like to the weather is permitting and you want to have this part of your journey right here climbing up that mountain at that point in time to be the uh strenuous part you could do that otherwise you could take the other easier route or you could go one way and then come back the other either way whatever you want to do so i'm going to change this to route blue and that will work for that just so that we can have that nice and neat for later right so we're done editing those routes and let's let's say that we want to add some phase lines here phase lines are a good way of in case you're going up there not not up there by yourself and you're reporting back your position to someone else like a headquarters element or just family back at home what you can do is add in phase lines and this is a good way to demonstrate the drawing tool so let me get we get rid of our routes over here let's go to our drawing tool right here i'm just going to click draw polyline and this is it i'm just going to say pick a good spot for a phase line let's see right here see if you remember we were going downhill until we got right here and then this right here this section from here to here was the most difficult part so i'm going to put a phase line right there for route yellow i'm going to end the shape and let's see we're going to do this and i'm going to name it let's call it phase line hmm let's go with spongebob see doesn't have to be anything super super duper special um i'm going to hesitate to name it yellow because our routes are yellow so i'm going to pick orange i know spongebob is obviously not orange but that kind of helps a little bit then i'm going to go over here and see there we've got phase line spongebob and this is so that say that you're trying to radio back and you don't have anybody tracking you like every step you take right you're actually having to expend resources to transmit your position you could say hey we just passed phase line spongebob it's a milestone in your trek so let's put one right there and let's put another one up here right as you get to the ridge because if anything's going to happen it's when you get to the very top of this elevation and you might have some kind of adversarial force on the other side something might happen if there's anything going to happen it's going to be right here at this point so let's go ahead and draw another polyline let's put it like right about here in that shape and we'll call this one once it loads call this one baseline patrick we'll make it magenta there we go and close that out and then let's put one more in there because if you remember this is not along the very top of the ridge line because as we remember we don't want to silhouette ourselves we want to not not have visual range of the contact until we're almost in position so let's put another phase line right about here that way somebody if we said this phase line right if we cross this phase line right here we'll know that we're almost there on top of the objective so let's go ahead and drop another one in there we'll drop it like right here so that's a good one see if it loads and we'll call this one phase line squid word we will make it let's see sort of light blue that'll work so yeah that's sort of keeping a theme it kind of helps kind of helps things as well i'm not going to put phase lines for blue here uh just because of you know time constraints and it's once you've done a couple of these you'll know how to do the others so now we've got a product that's starting to take place here now let's say for instance that like i said you know cell phone jamming is kind of an issue right so what i'm going to want to do is go back here to our target let's say right here in the city and i want to avoid direct line of sight to the city so i'm going to go over here to elevation tools once again we're going to do another view shed once again drop one let's drop it right there i'm sorry i forgot to select it drop it right there and let's close that out for a second let's see if it reaches all the way to our target yeah it does alright cool so if i'm in this red here i'm not going to be in direct line of sight to this city which means that if i'm using a cell phone i'm most likely going to be connecting to towers over here to the north right unless i pop over this ridge line then there's most likely a cell tower somewhere down here now if your uh communications dudes and your operation dudes or or whoever is on top of their stuff they can give you a kmz of all of the cell towers in this area so you can more accurately make your route to avoid any potential electronic surveillance but we don't have that capability so what we're going to do is set up a good spot that we can pop back over to to make a radio call back north back to say maybe our vehicle right and where we have a bigger repeater so let's go ahead and drop another point right here in this red spot this will be our good radio zone it's nice and clear there's not a whole lot of uh vegetation but we want to we want to stick we don't want to be out in the open we want to be able to get in there very easily without our footprints coming around so let's go ahead and put it right about so right about here use a point dropper again let's see if we have a different symbol here maybe a different symbol that we can use let's see markers now okay generic icons no these are all numbers i forgot let's say google's probably got something look here yeah sure why not we'll just use that for the telephone for a while and that will be our point and we can change the name of it to uh radio site there you go and so you can start building these products and start start putting these things together um just by using atac and because a lot of times you're you're stuck using google earth to kind of figure out okay what's a good you know what's a good place to put you know our radio things like that um where's a good site to set up well you know this is a lot easier and as you can see the 3d the 3d element of atac is not as good as google the reason that it's kind of hanging up here is because even i i've used this for quite a while now and even i don't i'm not used to it yet because to swivel this way to swivel along this axis you have to hold down your right mouse and then to swivel up and down you have to hold down mouse three your scroll wheel click and then holding down left mouse allows you to just move your eyeball point around so it takes a little bit of getting used to it is very different from google as when you start using this if you were used to having the google uh scroll wheel uh key doing everything you're gonna have to adapt um but yeah so this is this is how a product starts coming together all right now let's say i need an emergency egress route let's say i need to get the heck out of there because there's some kind of weather or storm or something like that well looks like i can make it down to this road here pretty good and then i can just follow that road all the way up to my vehicle or something like that or say that i need supplies something like that i can put in another point let's go ahead and drop in another point here this site right here looks like the last sorry hung up there for a second this site here looks like the last little bit see where it starts looks like there's a ridge line right here or some kind of soft ridge line that kind of obscures so you can be seen from the city down there but right here you can't be looks like a nice wide area right here with a blind curve around it so i can put in a resupply point right there let me put in um use i'll just use another spot i'll put a put an orange point we'll put that as uh potential resupply resupply one we'll just make it like that see there you go and this is pretty cool and you know a lot of us are familiar with doing this in either something like palantir or gaia or even something like google earth if you're if you're not one of the high speed dudes you don't have access to those tools but for the civilian side this is really a very very powerful tool because you can make these mission graphics and things like that and you don't have to uh don't really have to have a huge amount of of resources and also if someone's here using this when tag you can connect with a network so that you can actually monitor this stuff real time so say you've got dudes sitting in this lpop right and they are observing down there well you'll see on your map when they start dropping points so you can even call in threats and say look hey look i see there's a vehicle somewhere so i can just go ahead right click real quick make it a hostile point and boom send it to them instantly uh okay so yeah here are our uh here's our operation right this is just a very bare bones route it's it's basically just a hiking gps file that you can load into a gps but if you're using atac you have the ability to do a lot of different things say that you're coming up here you're almost to phase line spongebob here and you spot a uh a game camera or something like that and you want to kind of avoid that so that you're not you know being surveilled say that it's right here you can very quickly right click and drop a point right there and this is a contact and you can change this and edit this here in the thing i don't know if i would label this as a contact or just a point because it's kind of static the game camera is a static thing but let's just put this in there sorry my keyboard is hanging up for just a second there we go and there you go you can put a game camera right there or something like that you can change the symbol on this if you were to drop a point and all that kind of stuff but this is most likely what your your dude in the field is going to be doing uh from the actual atac app it takes a half a second to drop a point and you can convert it to whatever you want here back at your home sort of station right so let's say that you make it all the way up here to your lpop site and you say you know i really don't like it let me go ahead and move it a little bit let's go ahead and move it down the hill a little ways say that like that's a better spot there you go that's how you move a target so you click on it and then you've got this nice radial menu here and without even having to edit anything you can go ahead and click that button and that turns it into a nice more precision tool right and then you can move it around say i want to move it around to let's see right there in the shade of that bush that'll be a good spot right so say that that's that's your your new lpop site uh and once you get established and things like that you can use other different symbols and things down here on your target so say that you are you're in position here and you're looking at your uh your vehicles here on the ground looks like let's see if there's any military vehicles for real here in this image i don't really see any unless there's like a c12 or something down there that looks like a civilian aircraft let's see yeah now it looks just like normal civilian traffic but let's just say that a uh a c-130 or something lands in the parks like right here well what you can do is go ahead and drop a point and then instead of spot map we can go down here to vehicles there you go what did i say c130 there you go click c130 drop it right there and that will drop the actual size of the c130 on the map which is pretty cool and yeah so that's how you do that and you can of course change it by moving around moving the heading around and things like that so from your radial menu that's how you change which direction that it's pointed in let's say it's parked right there just like that and let's say that it's actually not there it's moved back a little bit move it back a little ways oh it's too far it's in the building move it forward a little bit yeah that's that's a good parking spot for it and as you can see here that shows the actual size of that aircraft on the ground and that's very helpful for mission planning and things like that so yeah that's pretty much how you can use atac for just a simple let's go see what's going on over there mission and you can make it much more of instead of just being hey let's go up there and see what we can see it can actually be a legitimate planned operation now of course this is uh this is not even baby steps this is like way before baby steps when it comes to things like actual military operation planning and the you know mdmp and stuff like that but this does give a lot of people a very simple uh way to use atac in their everyday missions for the civilian world now for the military world obviously atac has so many other uses that we can't even possibly cover all of them but for the civilian side of things we will be covering a lot more stuff like this so hopefully this was helpful for everyone um if you have any questions just please let us know drop them in the comments box below we have about a dozen different videos already uh being planned to show you how to do specific things within atac and then it's up to you it's to to have the flexibility to put all this stuff together so uh if you're just trying to use this to plan an operation like this a very small level operation that it's fine you can use atac for that as well so yeah this was just a very short primer on how you can use atac to increase your your mission you know planning efforts and things like that and really be sort of you know a very good asset to your team or family or just you know yourself or whatnot so yeah please be on the lookout for the future videos we're going to have coming out on atac we're going to show you how to do a lot of cool different stuff in atac but this this time around we just wanted to show you some of the very basic features um and stuff that you know maybe hasn't quite been talked about in a civilian context just yet so um we're going to be you know talking a little bit a little bit of doctrine in the future a little bit of atac tactics things stuff like that but this time we're just trying to get you just show you what the flavors are out there for you to choose from when it comes to atex so yeah that's really all we've got for now make sure to like comment and subscribe if you think that this stuff was useful and make sure to follow us on our other platforms as well just so you don't miss any of our other content that's all we've got for this time so always remember to fight in the shade you

//The Wire//2300Z January 20, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: DONALD TRUMP INAUGURATED AS AMERICA'S 47TH PRESIDENT. MASS DEPORTATION OPERATIONS CURRENTLY BEING PLANNED, EXPECTED TO ENTER OPERATIONAL PHASE IMMINENTLY. USA DESIGNATES CARTEL GROUPS AS FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Panama: Following President Trump's speech committing a return of the Panama Canal to American control, Panamanian President Mulino has rejected all of Trump's aspirations and committed to the Canal remaining in the control of Panama. AC: Per the Trade Promotion Agreement, the U.S. funds roughly 19% of Panama's entire GDP and over 50% of all trade and services. -HomeFront- Illinois: Significant efforts are underway to prevent the carrying out of deportation operations by federal authorities. Over the weekend, alleged plans to carry out mass deportation operations were leaked to the press, resulting in Governor Pritzker actively taking measures to aid and abet illegals in avoiding deportation. Following the leak, Gov. Pritzker's office has provided training materials, legal advice and services, and significant other resources to protect illegals from deportation. Following this development,, border czar Tom Homan voiced concern with the leak, but also stated that he was not sure as to why the focus was placed on Chicago specifically, as his deportation plans are more broad than just Chicago. Washington D.C. - Inauguration Day events proceeded without much incident, with President Trump and Vice President Vance being sworn in during a closed ceremony in the Capitol rotunda. Overnight, the last-minute actions by the outgoing Biden regime have resulted in controversy, as the White House issued last minute pardons and acts of clemency. Anthony Fauci, the entire J6 committee and most of those who testified in support of that endeavor, Gen. Mark Milley, and many other highly controversial individuals were pardoned overnight. This morning, a few minutes before President Trump was sworn in, the White House issued pardons for most of the Biden family. AC: Much like the highly-controversial pardoning of Hunter Biden, the pardons of the Biden family go back to any and all crimes committed since 2014. Texas: Following the transfer of power in Washington, the official Port of Entry in El Paso has been closed. This afternoon, the CBP One app used by illegal immigrants to gain easy access to the United States illegally, was shut down. Arizona: Yesterday afternoon the Cochise County Sheriff's Office released details of a series of arrests that were made last week. Four individuals (including two asylum seekers) were arrested on unknown charges after a traffic stop on I-10 that revealed over 10,000 rounds of .50 BMG, and almost 20,000 7.62x39 small arms rounds. AC: Though the details of the initial traffic stop and subsequent arrests are not entirely clear (and the possession of this ammunition is usually legal in the United States), transporting this much firepower at once is highly suspicious, leading many to assess that this is likely related to cartel activity. In turn, this has lead to concerns becoming more solidified with regards to the potential use of larger crew-served weapons by cartels in the United States. Vermont: A Customs and Border Patrol agent was shot and killed by an illegal alien on Interstate 91 near mile marker 168 while conducting a traffic stop this afternoon. AC: As of this report this is a developing situation, with follow-on details expected later. California: Aid efforts continue as wildfire risks remain high. Weather forecasts continue to call for increased winds throughout the region over the next few days. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The Presidential pardons issued overnight are a novel experiment in American politics, as the White House has set the precedent for pardoning individuals who have not been charged with a crime. These pre-emptive pardons, to include pardoning sitting members of Congress, is a legal oddity that will undoubtedly be scrutinized for years to come. More immediately, this will probably tie up investigations into the crimes these individuals committed. Additionally, despite the wording of the announcement of these pardons on the White House website, historically speaking, Presidential pardons are usually required to be accepted on the part of the recipient, which in turn requires an admission of guilt as indicated by the precedent of the 1925 *Burdick v. United States* case. However, since this detail normally is irrelevant anyway (as all criminals who are pardoned are indeed guilty of the crime by being convicted), it's not clear how a pre-emptive pardon might be treated legally. In any case, Presidential pardon power does not usually apply with regards to state-level charges. Concerning the border situation, President Trump announced that various cartel groups will be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). This is a major development that almost certainly will result in increased hostilities throughout many American cities where cartels have been allowed to occupy key terrain. As such, over the next few weeks increased violence is expected to be carried out by various cartels who seek to protect many decades of work in building their empires within the United States. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so one of the questions we get most often around here is from people who are prepared with the basics things like a normal balafang radio and a few other things like a comp plan or something but they're looking to take their communications preparedness to the next level so today we're going to talk about some things that might help with just that so first we have a balfing repeater so if you have a 2.5 millimeter to 3.5 millimeter audio jack cable and a couple of spare bow things laying around you can actually make your own repeater from it um depending on the legality in your area this may be something you might be interested in or not but essentially how it works is how any repeater on earth works which is a radio transmits on a specific frequency is picked up by one radio is transmitted to the other radio via vox which then picks it up and transmits it on a different frequency to another radio somewhere else in the world if you get a couple of these set up and you know and a couple of extended batteries for your baffing or even a wired setup for power and things like that you can set up a pretty significant communications network also this doesn't work just with voice but with aprs as well if you didn't want to use a baofeng radio to dial into the repeater you can also use it with aprs if you're so inclined and to help illustrate the importance of having your own repeater let's take a look at this mock-up of a city here so let's just say for instance that you live right here and let's say that a block or two away is another taller structure such as this one right there where the star is located so if you were to put a repeater at that star location what you could do is take your handheld radio or your directional antenna and point it directly at the repeater and use barely enough power to touch the repeater so that when it is picked up by the repeater and broadcast over a wider distance you're able to get a much wider spread for your information that way all your people out there throughout the city are able to hear the repeater but not hear exactly where you're transmitting from if they're trying to direction find you so that can be very very useful especially if someone comes in and is trying to direction find communications in the area to find out where like ham radio operations are occurring or from where communications are taking place uh this is very beneficial because someone who is going to have an aerial asset in order to help locate a ham radio tower well they're most likely going to find the repeater the repeater is going to be taking the taking the attention away from your actual handset transmission and this is very very useful i can remember personally spending a lot of time uh tracking insurgents in other nations and uh trying to find out exactly where they're coming from only to find out that we've been orbiting a repeater for a while so this is something that is very useful to do if you're trying to remain a little bit more covert also this helps in the world of electronic warfare and jamming so if you've checked out our other content on radio direction finding you'll have a better explanation of how jamming works but suffice it to say the short version is that jamming is not an end-all be-all people tend to think that you flip a switch and everything is jammed all at one time and it can't be unjammed well that's not really true jamming is all reliant on power levels so say you're transmitting at say one watt of power to reach your repeater network and the jammer picks that up and is going to transmit on just enough power to shut you down and overcome your transmission well then if your radio can transmit can be programmed to transmit at a higher level you can boost that up to maybe two watts and of course the cycle continues until either you or the jammer gives up and has no more power left to give right so usually the jammer is going to win in this case but if you're able to stick with the least amount of power required to transmit your message you're going to be more resistant to things like jamming up next are sound powered telephones now we have a specific episode dedicated to talking about sound power and field telephones in their usage in modern war but the short version for for this sort of sort of recap primer on advanced communications is we can jump back and use a century-old technology in a modern world as the united states navy has figured out they have they learned their lesson the hard way with the attack on the uss cole and again uh in 2017 with the uss fitzgerald collision uh they use exactly the power of sound powered telephones uh telephones that rely on nothing but a wire to make that communication uh work so sound power telephones while they are an archaic technology they can most certainly most certainly be used up next our hidden slash improvised antenna and this is something that we've touched on a little bit before but uh i think that this is kind of a unique situation something that the ham radio community is not necessarily equipped to handle at this particular moment so the ham radio community is very very good there's a very small subset of of ham radio operators who are operating in in protected areas or areas like hoas where you're not allowed to have an antenna up in your yard so they create these things called stealth antennas and those are great that's essentially what we're talking about however stealth antennas can also be a huge giveaway to activity based on a relatively new technology new is in the past 20 or so years technology that has made it very very easy to find things like radio antennas and this is the technology this is what we're talking about now i must caveat this and say that once again this is a technology that's very very um highly controlled by the us government um usually it's used used to find things like you know ieds and other troop movements and things like that but we were able to find patents on it as well as a russian company that does the same thing so we figured that we wouldn't get in too much trouble by talking about coherent change detection so coherent change detection is a synthetic aperture radar type system basically it's a very very accurate radar image an image that you can that can be taken that is so accurate that it can detect things like human footprints on dirt or things like wires strung up in the air and the way it works is an aircraft or a platform flies a specific pattern in the sky over a specific area taking a bunch of these synthetic aperture radar images and a couple of weeks later or some time period later sometimes a couple of days sometimes a couple weeks they'll come back and fly the exact same pattern and what they'll do is compare the images and this is where we get things like detecting things like human footprints this is also how we detect things like missile sites being constructed or moved or or hidden areas where we can't see the camouflage but we can see the human footprints leading up to a small little hidden area things like that but it can also be used to detect someone who throws say a ham radio antenna up in a tree during an emergency so that's something to keep in mind as well is that you know you can camouflage your antenna but it's very easy to find if you have the right hardware so improvising antenna from large metal structures would probably be a better idea such as warehouses so a general rule of thumb in the ham radio world is that anything big and metal can be an antenna maybe not a good one but it can work especially if you have a good solid connection method between the antenna material and your radio and also if you have a good antenna tuner so for instance our ham radio our hf radio rigs that we have we could hook these up to the roof of a metal building like a metal roof or something like that and uh it would serve as a pretty good antenna even though it's connected to the ground we could probably use our antenna tuners to get a really good signal out of that or if nothing else a usable signal and there would be absolutely no antenna visible to say a collections method so granted this is kind of pipe dreamy in some areas you're going to have to do a lot of testing and trying out to see what will actually work but this is an option for a lot of people who might not have the capability to string up an antenna in their area or if they're worried about things like you know radar surveillance in their area which is granted you know few and far between but it is there so we wanted to make people aware of it one of the main considerations for doing this though is making sure that one you have permission to do so and that there's no current going through whatever thing you are attaching your radio to as an antenna otherwise you might fry your antenna or something else and there's also the risk of electrocution and other safety issues which are inherent to the hand radio field so if you are going to do something like this make sure that whatever big metal material material you have is you know safe to do so and one of the things when we mention that is people automatically go to railroad tracks now railroad tracks uh even old ones such as this are usually a pretty bad idea and here's why well for one um people think that railroad tracks are just one long you know several thousand mile long depending on the track uh you know several thousand or 100 mile long piece of metal well that's really not the case railroad tracks you know depending on what area they're in and who owns the track they're going to have gaps in them those gaps are to allow the track to expand and contract you know with the heat of the summer and the cold weather in the winter time so that the tracks don't uh buckle and bow and things like that so uh railroad tracks are most certainly not a great idea because they they're really not a long piece of metal you'd have to go and check each specific connection and make sure that it's a good solid non-rusty or corrosive connection between each pieces of track which is going to be hard to do also even if you think that a train track is not being used or is not connected or is old chances are it's probably still going to be hooked up to what's called positive train control meaning that there is electricity flowing through both of those railroad tracks and as we've found out it is kind of a very no-no situation to go near an active railroad line as we found out by the domestic terrorism that we have seen in the pacific northwest when it comes to uh activists trying to either derail trains or cause a positive train control to to error and have an error there so things like that make that sort of a no-no now on the other hand what might be an option is things like bridges so a lot of bridges nowadays are not being used especially things like old defunct railroad bridges where there's no track leading up to the bridge at all and you've got just a big piece of metal there now of course you have to make sure that it's of course not being used and there's no power going through it as well there's no way for you to accidentally put power through a railroad line because that's something you most certainly do not want to do not only because it's dangerous but because it really doesn't work that well like i said railroad tracks are fairly short considering that there's gaps in them and also they're laying on the ground they're connected to the ground so you're not really going to get a good resonance and a good range out of them anyway so stuff like that is is definitely a consideration and then moving forward into a more modern era we have things like laser communications so nasa and other space agencies for a few years now have been working on laser communication systems really ever since the 60s we've been fascinated with putting lasers into space as a communications method and we even for a time period had laser mirror reflectors on the moon so that scientists back on earth could bounce laser signals off and more precisely measure the exact distance between earth and the moon so things like that have been around for a while but lately we are seeing a lot more sort of indie articles come out about how to build laser communication systems and laser communication systems are being able to send a message along a beam of light rather than a radio signal have a very have a lot of potential upsides meaning that you could have purely directional communications communications that can't be intercepted unless you're physically between the two points and even then it's easy to do to determine interceptions so stuff like that would be very cool to develop and we're certainly working on that here at our end it can be done very cheaply it can be done a little bit more expensively but we're definitely looking into things like laser communications and also moving from space age back to some of the oldest forms of communication on earth we have tap code and morse code basically these are the most timeless and simple communications methods that we know of um and for those of you who don't know who the gentleman on the screen is this is admiral jeremiah denton admiral denton was uh he was one of the earliest pows during the vietnam war and his story is very unique in that he was as of of course being tortured daily by the north vietnamese but he was also a essentially a political prisoner since he was such a high-ranking officer but during his interrogations naval intelligence was able to determine that he had some kind of issue with his eyes when he was speaking to the japanese war correspondent who was interviewing him for propaganda purposes they noticed that he was actually blinking something and actually he was blinking out a message so this is exactly what the message was so all the while he was saying that the north vietnamese were treating him nicely and that he was being well cared for he was blinking out for naval intelligence to intercept the word torture and actually his uh award post uh post his release reflected this that he blinked out a distress message in morse code at the television camera and was understood by united states naval intelligence so even though you think that morse code might be a very archaic and ancient way of communicating it is most certainly not out of date and also a more modern version of the morse code is the tap code so for anyone who is in the military and has taken a even the basic siri course they know that the tap code is a simple way of using taps instead of dots and dashes in order to convey a message using a grid as on screen here so memorizing the tap code or having a small little cutout like in your wallet or something that you can you know take a look at every now and then just to refresh yourself stuff like that would be very very handy and learning morse code in tap code is definitely something that if nothing else you know it's a good skill to have and then moving back more into the modern age we have things like software defined radio adsb receivers so for those of you that have been following us for a while you know that we use things like adsb exchange and flight radar 24 in order to track aircraft movements and a few of you have probably noticed by now that at least on flight radar 24 there aren't any military aircraft and that's because flight raider 24 responds to requests from the faa to block or not list certain aircraft so if you're a private citizen and you don't want your information broadcast on the flight radar 24 website you can absolutely tell the faa and the faa will remove you or tell flight radar 24 to remove you from the website you can also skip the faa and just pay flat radar 24 fee and they'll remove your aircraft or at least block it that's why when sometimes you'll see aircraft flying over the area and it will have nothing no data no registration no serial numbers and it will say blocked sometimes adsb exchange another competing website for flight radar 24 so they actually do show military aircraft but not all of them only the ones that are not blocked so that's something to keep in mind as well the good news is is that if you have your own um sdr you can make an adsb receiver in fact this is what ours looks like you can do it with any sdr dongle so for like 25 bucks you can hook it up to your computer run some software on it and and you'll be able to be up and running you can also do what we did which was take a raspberry pi buy a little kit on amazon or some other electronic parts store hook up a power bank to it and now you have a man portable system that works in conjunction with an app to actually display everything in your area and our area is pretty hampered by terrain but we actually get about a hundred miles radius from the uh from this adsb receiver so this is one this is just one of the ones we have we have smaller ones we have larger ones but this is kind of the more man-portable one you'll see a demonstration for on youtube so if you're looking to sort of skip the middle man and not pay flight reader 24 for for a subscription or if your internet might go out in times of need you can actually make your own adsb receiver connect to it with bluetooth on your phone where it's actually wi-fi connect via wi-fi on your phone smartphone and you'll be good to go you'll see all the aircraft in your area keeping with the theme of software-defined radios you can also get what's called a kerberos sdr uh and create basically a passive air search radar which is interesting um if you wanted to get into that now the kerberos sdr itself is kind of expensive at at current market value it's around 300 but all you really need are two sdr dongles and a little bit of electronics experime experience and you'll be able to create this as well and what this looks like is you're able to put these sdrs together with a couple of different antennas and you're able to see aircraft flying in the sky even if they have their transponders turned off depending on the platform you're probably not going to be able to see things like drones uh high-flying you know military drones because they have a lot of stealth characteristics you're most likely not going to be able to pick up any stealth aircraft whatsoever but you're going to be able to pick up things that don't have transponders turned on such as things like air force one in an emergency when they turn their transponder off you'll be able to find them and see them in the sky so that's kind of interesting and very useful especially considering that a lot of agencies are becoming very very aware that these flight tracking websites have a lot more data out there for the average citizen to follow so if you wanted to get into something like this you could build your own radar site and it doesn't emit any signal whatsoever it uses the signals that are already out there in the ionosphere bouncing around in it to see the reflections of aircraft in the sky which is very very interesting so another thing that you could do with an str is intercept weather satellite imagery that's right the weather satellite imagery that you see on the local weather channel is actually freely and publicly available so this is not hacking or doing anything illegal these weather satellites actually broadcast in real time the image of the area in which they're flying over down to earth so if you had the right software set up which is all free by the way and you bought an rtl sdr for say less than 50 bucks or so if you were to buy one of those and set it all up you could at a certain time of day when the satellite's flying overhead it will alert you by the way when the satellite is coming overhead you could turn it on and have an auto have an automatic system for downloading the latest weather satellite imagery to your computer all without the internet so that's kind of an interesting usage and a very a very common usage for people who have these sdrs and a little bit of you know technical expertise they can set this up and you can get your weather imagery uh for free from the from the satellites and up next is key wicks so for those of you who have not heard of keyworks before they've been around for a few years now and qx is a program really some software that allows you to download the entire contents of wikipedia to a hard drive and view it in places where there is no internet you can do this with pretty much any wiki wiki voyage wiktionary medical books and things like that on on there project gutenberg is also on there every book that's ever been uploaded to project gutenberg is available things like that basically the sum of human knowledge right so what you could do is using software that's on the keywords website is you could download this and flash it to a sd card then load it into a raspberry pi and once you plug and power up the raspberry pi it then becomes a wi-fi hotspot that you could connect to and view the contents of wikipedia all without using the internet which is pretty cool if you wanted to set up your own little local area network and set up your little hot spot you could put it up somewhere somewhere high where people could get to it and the the latency and with even with many people connected to it's pretty it's pretty quick so even you know something as small as like say a little altoids 10 can hold the entire sum of human knowledge and be broadcasting it to everybody in the vicinity that's going to be pretty cool especially coming up with you know the rampant censorship that's already starting to come down throughout the internet with things like you know amazon's web services and cloudflare and things like that you know that infrastructure is not as exactly as secure as we thought it was going to be especially if they don't like what you say so qx allows you to put knowledge out there and you can use really any uh form of wikipedia and things like that uh so that you're not reliant on a system that might be changed so we're currently using a an image of wikipedia from late uh late last year before all the censorship stuff kicked off and before a lot of wikipedia articles got changed so um at that point in time everything seemed to be like the you know the best uh best image we could find so so that's the one we chose so you could choose any image you want and then flash it to a raspberry pi and then you could be walking around town giving people free wikipedia as you're sitting at the coffee shop or something like that so one thing that we are super stoked about is laura radio or lora radio specifically via an app called meshtastic so a lot of you have heard about us talk about things like gotenna and gotenna is a great tool it's an off-grid mesh communicator that allows you to communicate with somebody else and share a lot of data without an infrastructure being around and basically this you know bringing a smartphone and your device right here you can create your own grid and communicate when there is uh when there's no one else around so that's a really awesome feature we've implemented the gotenna devices into our own emergency plans and we use them pretty much daily for a lot of stuff but there are a few downsides enough downsides that we are starting to move to a system called mesh tastic now we're going to still support goten of course in our emergency communications plan but we figure there's not too many people out there that actually have the gotenna devices for a few different reasons and the main reason is the price these mesh tastic devices specifically the ttgo t beam board can cost anywhere from 25 to 35 dollars the ones we have are 25 bucks and you can get them shipped from china or any retailer such as walmart here in the states for uh pretty cheap so we are using the 915 megahertz versions of the ttgo t-beam board and they were they're working out great and as you can see um these particular versions are 35 bucks a pop but we actually got ours for 25 because we uh soldered on the um the board the led the oled display ourselves so let's talk a little bit more about this mesh tastic thing so goten is like i said are great but gotennas use uh a lot of flashy advertising and stuff to essentially come out and say they're using the mers network so the gotenna devices are essentially a small little repeater network and a little computer built in that transmits your message encrypted by the way across the mers frequencies now this is good and bad good because it's open source and you don't need a license these free these frequencies are free for anyone to use in the united states but that's also bad because they're free for everybody to use in the united states and in our area merge frequencies are heavily used so you might see some interference uh we haven't really had too much of an issue with that um but as far as we can tell but it is a potential right a lot of people possess battlefang radios that can transmit on mers those are the baofeng radios are the de facto you know america the radio of america now and they can transmit homers and a lot of groups are using mers to get around having to buy a license so goten is the same way well the mesh tastic devices are a little different in that these mers frequencies make for not so great of a range it's essentially just vhf radio so in our particular area you know range is subjective right range is going to be different for everybody but we get depending on where we're at one to six miles direct line of sight in our specific area which is you know southeastern united states coastal region more of a woodland type environment so that's something that's not super super great and this has to do with the power that the gotenna can put out the fact that you can't add on an external antenna little things like this add up to to make it basically a fixed system if you buy the gotenna you cannot upgrade it or scale it at all also they're very expensive very very expensive so depending on sales tax in your area you could be paying upwards of a hundred dollars per device to have a gotenna and um you have to buy them in packs of two you can't just say oh well you know you can join our group or you gonna get one you know get another family member on the on the on the system it doesn't work like that you have to buy at least two they don't sell them in packs of one which is kind of a kind of a bummer so you're ended up you're you're ending up spending two hundred dollars and potentially an extra hundred dollars that you don't need depending on how many family members you have and other people in your group so that's kind of a bummer the mesh tastic device is like i said pretty much better in every possible way it's of course encrypted with the same encryption that the gotenna devices use but it's actually got a longer range the it's still line of sight but from what we've been able to tell for whatever reason we've gotten significantly better range and that's because we're putting better antennas on them the antennas on these devices are plug and play you could hook it up to a a 100 foot tall tower or you could hook it up to the little rubber ducky that comes with the board either way you're going to get a better range than from the gotenna because you can mount the antenna somewhere else other than the device you know if you're wanting to run one of these bad boys on your like your plate carrier or something like that you could run the antenna using an antenna relocation kit to somewhere else so just where it's a little bit better to transmit from and because of this alone we think this is really the sole factor is that we're getting 10 plus miles from these devices simply because the antenna is upgradable it's using a little bit less power than the gotenna but it's actually ranges is much uh much more significant and theoretically a lot of people especially in europe where these sort of have a stronger basin here in the states people are regularly getting 30 miles out of these uh these devices so there's that also it's easily scalable just like you can replace the antenna you can replace the battery which is great because one of the things that we personally run into with the gotenna is that the battery runs out after about 24 hours and we have to sit there and charge it via a power bank which is fine for most people but you know a power bank is is something that is going to get a lot of use so power bank for us is is used to charge things like camera batteries you know surveillance equipment mobile phones and things like that i don't need another device that have to charge via usb well the meshtastic device you don't need a usb you can just swap the battery out so it takes a normal 18650 battery which is what a lot of tactical flashlights nowadays take so if if push comes to shove you could take the battery out of your flashlight and swap it over to your communications method that modularity is completely invaluable to us because it's uh it's it's such a scalable and modular system also it uses far less power than the gotenna device the gotenna device we're getting about 24 hours before it's completely dead in the water whereas from the lora device depending on how much we use it we can get from a few days to as much as a week now of course your message latency is going to go up so you're not going to get messages instantly like you would with the gotenna but your device can communicate for several several days as much as a week and like i said you can also solder on additional 18650 batteries in a battery holder and that would work just as fine also the software on board the mesh tastic is open source that is a huge thing for us because we're able to make sure that the community thrives and and grows whereas the gotenna stuff is not really open source it's um it's heavily controlled by the makers of gotenna and there are you know we're dependent on them for software releases whereas the mesh tactic if the main people making the mesh tastic updates and things like that if they go out of business or if they stop making updates the code's out there so somebody else can can take up that torch but really the biggest feature is that it's 35 per unit um or in our case 25 right now they're around 25 dollars but in the the worst case they're 35 so we'll stick with 35. so you can buy really three times as many or four times as many uh device these laura devices as one single gotenna so you can either buy one gotenna well really you can't buy one go tenant like i said they only are sold in packs of two so you're talking about buying potentially eight of these mesh tastic devices or two of the gotenna devices so i think that you know that cost factor alone makes it very uh makes it very appealing also the fact that in the united states the frequency that they use is 915 megahertz 915 megahertz that's very important because most handheld radios cannot transmit on 915 megahertz and this is a very special frequency that's also allocated for uh usage free to the public so you don't need a license to use these not at all as long as you stay on 915 megahertz in the united states in other countries it's different but here we're using 915 and you don't need a license to use it and also most handheld radios most radios in general can't pick it up so that's also very very useful it doesn't it's not going to stop your government surveillance and stuff like that but considering these are using essentially burst communications low power burst communications on a frequency that's not normally monitored that can be a huge boon to security as well one thing to remember though is that the mesh tastic system is more or less in the beta stage you're going to have to have some technical proficiency you're going to have a little bit of experience and you're going to have to put in a decent amount of work whereas the gotenna devices you buy them online you charge them up you connect to the app and you're done well the meshtastic requires a little bit more work than that not much if you can buy these right now i think for ali on aliexpress or alibaba or whatever the website is called you can buy a a ttgo board with the screen already soldered on it with uh the battery connector already on it and it's going to already have the software installed on it so really all you have to do is when you get it screw the antenna on it and put a battery in it and you're done so if you're willing to do that this might be an option for it you don't need to be a sort of you know expert with electronics to be able to to use one of these devices you could if you wanted if you wanted to spend you know a few dollars less per device you could solder the screen on yourself and you could install the software yourself but right now for around 35 bucks you can get the whole kit where all you got to do is pop in a battery and the antenna so that's something that's pretty easy to do and it's something that we are definitely investing in for the future and the reason we're investing in this for the future is that this is no joke a huge deal these devices are definitely going to be around for a long time in fact one company uh created the fossa sat one a mini cubesat that was actually put into orbit around the fall of 2019 fall winter 2019 and it actually was able to while while it was up there uh be able to communicate with substations back on earth for quite a long period of time and it was able to relay messages as well so uh this is something that is definitely developing people are able to do this like they spent the company that did this spent thirty thousand dollars ten thousand dollars on the device and thirty thousand dollar twenty thousand dollars on this seat on board the uh the rocket and they were able to put their satellite into orbit this is amazing and this is all done via crowdfunding so someone who is able to create this infrastructure might be able to create something that's more global one day of course this is really just a sort of early alpha phase of things but it shows that the interest is there and the proof of concept works so we expect to see a lot more of these in the future perhaps to include some more more commercial ventures as well and finally we have to talk about something that's not necessarily communications related but is definitely an advanced topic what we're calling the clueless operator effect now when an emergency happens we have to assume that there will be people out there with radios and other communications methods they might have their own radios and communication stuff or they may have found somebody else's but they may not be an expert they may not have the basic skills right chances are if they have their own radios they probably don't know how to use them as well as say you or i do especially in an emergency when you're going to be stressed and fatigued and you're not going to be able to remember things right due to the fog of war right and chances are they're most likely not going to be able to program their own radios by hand they're probably you might also run into people who have nothing to do with radios they know nothing about radios except for what they see on tv or in video games we're also going to have to assume that there's going to be a lot of people out there that despite purchasing say like a balafang radio on amazon they probably don't have the ability to charge their radio's batteries so they're not going to be able to talk to you for very long chances are and also we have to assume that there might be people out there that don't have the ability to transmit but they can hear blind transmissions right that's why most of our communications plan like our comp plan or com card is really one-way communications we're going to be able to give people information in a very quick and concise manner so that they can hook up with us later right and this requires a very specific set of skills you know communications must be clear and concise this is something that is challenging even in the the ham radio community when it comes to emergency preparedness and stuff we also have to think about the ability to teach a lot of skills very quickly very clearly and over the radio in a short amount of time right so for someone who might not know how to work their radio right we might have to troubleshoot things and ask them questions and try to figure out why their radio isn't necessarily working while we still have the chance to contact them so really a simple industrial grade contingency heavy plan will be very very helpful not just for novices who have like the clueless operators right but for you know experts who might forget things during you know in the fog of war after a disaster where you're going to be you know chances are you're going to be very tired you're going to be stressed you're going to you know be working in a field that's probably not your expertise stuff like that is is uh all reduces capability so a plan ahead of time helps to reduce that impact so something like say our sound powered telephones the sound power telephone is one of the simplest communications uh things on the earth right but even then it still requires just a tiny bit of instruction like this is where you push to talk you push this button for to ring the other telephone and if your phone's not working make sure the wires are connected see that little bit of communication right there if i were to write that down and put that in a little booklet or a little you know laminated index card and zip tie that to the phone that would be very instrumental to somebody who might come across it you know in the night or in the dark in an emergency situation it might be very very helpful especially when when we're talking about things like ham radios which are not easy to understand for those of us who aren't in the comms world right so a lot of us basically we know how to work a walkie-talkie and we don't really know anything about propagation you know tunneling the i you know ionosphere stuff like that that's a hard concept for people to grasp and it's going to be impossible to teach somebody in a stressful environment so yeah hopefully this was all helpful this is just a first episode of many on our advanced communications methods that you can use to increase your capabilities beyond just the basic stuff right i think we're finding out by now with all the mass censorship out there in the world that we're having to create our own infrastructure in a lot of cases and we're having to get smart on topics that previously we've had the luxury of not uh not relying on so right now we're trying to increase capabilities for everyone and bring good information to everybody's communications plan so once again hopefully this was helpful drop us a some comments below if you have anything else to add or if there's any other topic that you'd like us to cover we'll check it out and see what we can do about it and also make sure that odds are that the youtube channel you're watching this on will probably be banned in the future so if you are watching this video watch it also on lbry lbry is our open source peer-to-peer decentralized system that allows us to bring content to anybody that wants it regardless of whether an isp or a server wants us to so make sure to get out there and check that stuff out and we will see you next time but until then always remember to find the shade as to actual out

by now the tactical community is well aware of the advantages of using night vision devices simply put night vision devices might not guarantee mission success but not having night vision will result in a person being seriously disadvantaged at night or will it are there situations in which natural night adaptation is superior to having a night vision device and how does natural night vision work in conjunction with traditional night vision devices today we're going to examine the world's first night vision device and see what techniques can be used to improve the natural night adaptation of the human eye as one might imagine there is a lot of urban legend surrounding the concept of natural night vision so hopefully today we can provide a well-rounded explanation of the topic and encourage everyone to take a closer look at old school doctrines surrounding night adaptation and up first some science the human eye and its arrangement in the dome piece is host to many fascinating processes so let's take a look at how the human eye works normally under normal conditions light originates from the sun bounces off of an object and gets blasted into your noggin the light gets refracted by the cornea through the pupil and enters the meaty bits of the eye through the lens once the light is inside your jelly roll it slams against the back wall hitting the retina the retina is responsible for converting light or anime if you're in the marines into electrical signals electrical signals that are then passed to the optic nerve and then shot up to your old meatloaf up top now there are a lot of things that can affect this overly simplified process age disease injury diet all of these can affect how efficient this process is but by far the number one factor for impacting how well you can see is darkness i know strange concept but bear with me for a moment during periods of darkness a lot of interesting stuff takes place inside the eyeball when it gets dark it is obvious to some of us that there is in fact less light less light bouncing off of objects means less light getting beamed into your peepers and when that happens well some interesting stuff takes place you see the retina contains two types of photoreceptors photoreceptor is just a fancy name for the type of cells that can convert light to electrical signals the retina contains two types of photoreceptors rods and cones cones are the pretty boys cones only work out in bright light where everyone can see them there aren't many of them only 5 million cones to over 100 million rods but they get all the credit because cones are what allow you to see in color but when the spotlights turn off and it's too dark to take instagram photos cones become totally ineffective that's where rods come in rods are the hard workers they function in darkness just fine the always forgotten but never by the vc rods are the workhorses of the night they are also what allow us to see in black and white this is why when your mom flips the light off in your basement you can't really see colors only the outlines of highly contrasting objects or different shades of gray this is due to the purkinje effect also pronounced perchini by those more cultured than i the purkinje effect is sometimes also referred to as the purkinje shift effect this is the phenomenon of the human eye tending to have higher sensitivity towards the blue end of the electromagnetic spectrum at lower illumination levels in other words the human eye has trouble distinguishing between certain colors under progressively dark conditions remember the internet sensation of this particular image this dress a while back some people see a black and blue dress and other people say the color is white and gold the purkinje shift effect has been offered up as an explanation of why people have different reactions to seeing the photo based on how dark adapted their eyes are in other words the ambient lighting in which a person is located might determine what image they see if the brightness on their phone is turned way up they might see a white and gold dress but if their brightness is turned way down and their eyes are beginning to adapt to the darkness they might see a blue and black dress sure this specific example is an optical illusion in many ways but the purkinje effect is one explanation that has been offered up for this internet craze and examining how differently colors appear to the human eye under varying lighting conditions is very handy for the field of camouflage but as we mentioned dark adaptation takes time this is because our mighty rods need a special chemical to function just like we all need a mighty scoop or three of protein to grow big and strong the rods in our eyes also need a little sip of protein to function but instead of consuming protein our rods make it themselves this go-go juice is comprised of a protein called rhodopsin now rhodopsin is a bit shy and only likes to work out in complete darkness in fact any light whatsoever will cause a adoption to decay away pretty much instantly rhodopsin also takes a while to produce usually several hours this is why it takes a long time for your eyes to reach peak effectiveness for seeing in the dark this will be important to remember later so to recap for those that are a little slow on the uptake like me in the human eye we have two types of photoreceptor cells cones and rods cones allow us to see in color but don't work that well in the dark rods allow us to see better in the dark but only work in black and white rods need a special protein called rhodopsin to function and rhodopsin takes a long time to make so taking all of this science stuff into account how does the night adaptation process work well it's pretty simple just stay in the dark for a while that's really it the eye will naturally adjust to darkness as best it can the rods in the retina juicing up with rhodopsin to reach peak effectiveness in a few hours remember rhodopsin decays away to nothing pretty much instantly upon the eye taking in light so when you're trying to adapt your eyes to the darkness go sit in the dark for 30 to 45 minutes oh and one more thing stay off of your phone i know how much of a challenge that might be but tiktok and snapchat can wait for half an hour even if you pull out your phone for just a second to see who liked your post on instagram that is enough to ruin your natural night adaptation no turning down the brightness on your phone will not work it will help for sure but no phone screen on the planet can get dim enough to allow you to use your phone in the dark while retaining your natural night vision but for those of you who actually have to use your phone in the dark for tactical reasons fear not there are a couple of things you can do to make it so that you can use your phone in the dark without blinding yourself too much we will talk about that in just a minute when it comes to biology the human eye is a fascinating bit of engineering and you can see the sort of primal origins of how the human body has evolved for example our eyes are forward facing they're situated to look forward in the skull this allows us to have better depth perception and allows for natural range finding skills that might be needed to throw a spear for instance and at night well that's where things get super interesting for instance even though the rods and cones are both present in the eye they are concentrated in different zones different places in the eye remember how the cones are the pretty boys of the eye well where else would you expect to find them but right up front if we use parlance from night vision tubes the cones are mostly concentrated in zone 1 right in the center of our vision obviously cones are spread throughout the eye but most of them are concentrated here rods on the other hand are mostly concentrated in zones 2 and 3. this is very very important this means that your natural night adapted vision is most effective in your periphery unlike during the day your peripheral vision is best at night this is especially important to remember for trying to observe objects at night rather than trying to look directly at something look beside it or around it you can try this yourself and i guarantee the results will be surprising remember that the human eye is predisposed to seeing movement as well so when you're using your peripheral vision to see something in the dark don't just stare at a single point off to the side of it constantly keep your eye moving all around the target you'll find that if you stare at a fixed point beside an object and don't move it tends to disappear from view so keeping your eyes moving is an effective way to use your peripheral vision to view something in the dark remember the process of your eyes adapting to the darkness takes time it usually takes several hours for the rods to produce enough rhodopsin to be effective this is great biologically as the human eye can adapt at the same rate that the sun goes down more or less so that by the time the sun is set your eyes are adapted to the darkness it makes sense for the caveman right but in our modern world we don't have time for all that so what can we do well as usual history provides the answer human beings fought two global wars without the use of night vision devices and came up with some pretty interesting tricks the first of which is the concept of rigging for red ever since electrical lighting became common on sailing vessels the use of lighting has been a hot topic especially in the field of naval warfare generally speaking red lighting has been accepted as the standard for preserving the natural night adaptation of the human eye and the reason is pretty simple red light has less effect on the production of rhodopsin than white light remember how white light causes rhodopsin to decay well red light doesn't cause this decay the receptors don't react to red light technically it still does but to a lesser degree that's why red lighting has been touted as preserving night vision for over a century this is why all military naval vessels have the practice of rigging for red or turning all the lights red in certain areas this is usually done on the bridge lookout staging areas or really any compartment that directly leads to the exterior of the ship red lighting is frequently used for other reasons besides preserving night vision as well a lot of times red lighting is used because it's simply not as bright the human eye is less sensitive to red light so if you have a hundred lumen white light and a hundred lumen red light the red light will look a lot dimmer to the human eye it's simply softer on the eyes in regular white light that's why red lighting is frequently used in open bay temporary building or birthing areas in deployed environments it allows for 24 7 lighting that is bright enough to see by but not bright enough to ruin people's sleep but there are some downsides to using red lighting which we will cover in a separate video on tactical lighting but the cliff notes version is that red lighting when used all the time causes some serious problems eye fatigue depth perception problems psychological problems and the difficulty of reading maps are all issues that come from red light use red light will not solve all of your problems just using red lights or staying in red light only areas before going out into the darkness will help a lot and it's recommended to do but you will still need some time in the dark for your eyes to finally adjust despite these problems red light is still the standard and red lighting should generally be used whenever possible if you are trying to preserve your natural night adaptation a great tool to use that will help you with this are red light goggles basically just goggles that are tinted red this has been a standard tactic of naval lookouts for many many years and is a good way to start the process of adapting your eyes to darkness with red filtered goggles you can put them on about half an hour before you need to conduct operations and conduct your pre-mission checks get your gear together or whatever else you need to do this way you don't have to build a red light only staging area and you can use the normal lighting you have in your home red filtered goggles are also very handy for driving at night when trying to preserve night vision for me this is especially important since everyone in my area seems to prefer driving with their high beams on all the time so if i'm driving out to an observation post and for whatever reason i wanted to preserve my natural night adaptation wearing some red tinted goggles or glasses while driving really helps with this still not ideal and no amount of red filters will totally preserve your night vision but it does help a lot and since it's at night nobody will see how much of a weirdo you look like while driving with red tinted goggles as far as specific red light goggles these cannot be easily purchased because not many companies make them specifically for preserving night adaptation you can find goggles and glasses that are marketed towards the laser pointer crowd usually sold under the label of laser safety glasses you can find these high school science class wrap around glasses for really cheap we got these for about a dollar a piece from china as far as providing adequate safety against lasers i highly doubt it but they do provide a lot of benefit for night adapting your eyes they're not perfect because of the gaps they leave around the eyes and how cheaply they are made but it's better than nothing what is vastly more effective is to build your own red light goggles from an ordinary set of ballistic goggles these here were built from a set of us military issue good enough to get the government contract but not really that great revision locust goggles pretty much everyone that has deployed overseas in the past five to ten years has several sets of these lying around you can take the clear filters which come with the goggles and cover them with red tinted color correction light filter gels these are filters for photography lights and are again found everywhere for really cheap just as a side note since photography light gels are usually heat resistant they're really great for making your own red light filters for flashlights as well but back to the goggles all you have to do is draw the outline of the lens on the gel cut it out and put the goggles back together again using the clear filter sandwiching the red filter in wherever you can some goggles allow for this easier than others so you might need to tinker around with it for a bit on these particular goggles the filter fits on the outside a bit better than on the inside you could of course just leave out the clear filter as well but i find the clear filter adds a little bit of structural integrity that you really need plus it keeps your ballistic writing if that matters to you but whatever you do when you get everything assembled and jammed together you'll have a really effective set of red filtered goggles that you can still use during the day by taking the red filter off and if you have a little bit left over red tinted photography gel works as a field expedient cover for your phone's screen like we mentioned earlier phone screens are really really bad at allowing you to preserve your night vision but in the modern world where atac or offline mapping apps are the new hotness the use of smartphones is only going to increase in the battle space for better or worse especially for tasks like flying drones turning the brightness down can help using a night mode which tends to screen red also helps but what's really effective for us has been to use red photography gels on some phones and with some gels your ability to use your phone screen might be impeded but if you monkey around with it for a bit you can probably get it to work we tried several very cheap photography gels and we were able to get the phone screen to work just fine remember though it's not a good idea to have some janky construction getting in the way of using combat tools it would really really suck for you to crash your drone or not be able to see a troops in contact location because you taped up your phone screen poorly but if you're using your phone for less potentially life-threatening reasons jury rigging a red screen cover can be an effective way to keep your phone screen from ruining your night vision too much so to recap using red lights wherever possible and using red filtered goggles if you need to interact with normal white lighting are all effective ways to preserve one's own night adaptation now let's talk about some of the more controversial options that might or might not work in helping your natural night adaptation the first of which is what's generally called the pirate eye patch method and this one takes a bit of explaining several years ago this theory sprang up on the internet out of the debates surrounding the traditional stereotype of a pirate wearing an eye patch research has been done on many levels on this topic everyone from mythbusters to the always correct quora internet expert has weighed in on this theory the theory is that pirates wore an eye patch not because of an injury or disability but in order to maintain night adaptation for instance a pirate with two perfectly good eyes would then cover one of them up with an eye patch during a boarding event then when heading below decks on the captured ship the pirate would take the eye patch off or switch it to the other eye depending on what version of the myth you want to believe so that he would at least have one darkness adapted eye this way he could be more combat effective in the darkened areas of a ship again i must stress that this for the moment is a myth there is zero historical evidence to support this no historical records whatsoever that kind of indicate this might be true the only people that seem to consider this theory are the kind of people who also have a time slot on the history channel at 3 am so not exactly the best academic source to me this theory sounds exactly what you'd find in the depths of reddit or somewhere else on the internet meaning that it makes a lot of sense on paper but in reality it makes very little sense for one the interior of ships during the age of sale was not completely dark it was perfectly bright enough to conduct combat in if sailors were completely blinded upon going on deck that would present some serious hazards also internet warriors often forget the importance of depth perception when engaging in hand-to-hand combat i know it's a strange concept but swinging a katana around in your room alone does not accurately replicate the combat conditions of the 18th century sailor as with most internet-based combat theories the eye patch to preserve the night vision theory ignores a lot of the well-established doctrine and historical records on vessel boarding a person wearing an eye patch to preserve night vision in just one eye is creating so many problems for himself while only partially solving one minor issue that has little to no effect on actual combat depth perception and the loss of a significant portion of his field of vision is a major limiting factor in combat and all of that is given up just to see slightly better on a slightly dim lower deck i don't know it just doesn't seem very likely so sorry for the digression but this was worth talking about because this inevitably comes up whenever we're talking about natural night vision another series of myths and some quasi truths is in the field of supplements different vitamins or other supplements that might improve one's ability to see in dark conditions first up the myth that accidentally might have some actual validity and that myth is that eating carrots increases one's ability to see in the dark this myth is a gigantic can of worms that goes back to world war ii allied authorities mostly the british issued dozens of posters urging citizens to eat carrots because it would increase their ability to see in the dark during the blitz famous flying aces attributed their kills to their diet of carrots allowing them to see german aircraft in the dark skies over britain but this as some would say was a lie the entire story of carrots causing better night vision at night was a total propaganda story from the very start the reasoning behind this propaganda and mass cover-up is for two reasons for one encouraging people to eat carrots at a time when food insecurity was a significant threat for britain was very important just like famous athletes who have been selling bowls of wheaties for decades the idea was that a super cool flying ace could sell the idea of victory gardens to the general populace but that was really a side benefit the main reason for concocting this lie was to cover up the fact that the allies had finally created functional radar radio detection and ranging or radar in its early days was one of the most classified military projects of all time for both the allies and the axis both sides had been working on radar during the interwar years and during the war the battle of britain hastened the efforts to build better more accurate radar systems in the later years of the war the allies figured out a way to make radar equipment small enough to fit inside the nose of a fighter aircraft finally night fighters would have a way to find german aircraft in the dark skies over europe german aircraft which never stood a chance against radar but there was a huge problem if the germans realized that the british had radar in fighter aircraft they would certainly change their tactics which could make this significant advantage less effective but arguably the more significant risk was for the americans aircraft-based radar sets could also detect the periscopes of submarines for years german u-boats had thrived off the american east coast and the graveyard of the atlantic to this day stands as an attestation to their effectiveness but we can clearly see a sharp dip in the effectiveness of the german u-boat right around the summer time of 1943. this is due to a combination of things changes in convoys and advances in technology the cracking of the enigma code really helped but also the development of aircraft-based radar which could spot the periscope of a submarine even before they got close to a convoy and if we examine the diaries of u-boat sailors they were baffled at the time they frequently remarked that they would be sailing along in the roughest of seas or under an overcast sky and suddenly an aircraft would come out of nowhere heading right for them in the later parts of the war u-boat captains recall crash diving much more often usually in bad weather conditions when previously they had been able to sail on the surface without any trouble whatsoever obviously something was up the allies efforts to explain it away as simply high doses of carrots was a way to cover up the existence of radar for just a bit longer giving the allies a significant advantage whether or not the germans believed this or not who knows the germans had been working on radar for many years so they had to suspect something but in any case this historical tale has been an interesting story over the years however it turns out that this propaganda story might actually have some truth to it in retrospect the idea is that carrots contain a compound called beta-carotene which helps in the production of vitamin a and in the years since world war ii vitamin a has been medically proven to have positive impacts on cataracts as well as the treatment of night blindness so one can see the plausibility of vitamin a helping one's own natural night vision however the research that has been done does not really indicate this yes vitamin a can help someone with night blindness but medical research does not indicate that vitamin a will make a healthy person have superior night vision vitamin a can really only help someone who has an injury or disease it can't make a healthy person superman but if you are like me and don't trust any medical research these days you can try it yourself in a completely unscientific test i personally have taken vitamin a supplements for a few months and i have noticed no improvement on my night vision either in the time it takes for my eyes to become dark adapted or my visual acuity when fully dark adapted i've noticed no difference a few times i did notice a slight improvement in my ability to make it through the snell and eye chart but those effects were not repeatable or attributable to the vitamin a it could have been some other supplement i'm taking it could be that i simply drank more water that day who knows in other words it might have worked a little but i myself did not really notice any spectacular results so at least for me supplements to improve natural night vision are kind of hit or miss they might have some benefit in a clinical setting but in a tactical environment anything increasing one's night vision by margins that are only noticeable in a lab setting is not beneficial in other words if i did not notice a significant increase i'd say it's probably not really worth it but that's just me and that leads us to discussing the more boots on ground applications and considerations of natural night adaptation namely how natural night adaptation can be useful in real world scenarios and how natural night adaptation might still have some use in a world where night vision devices are the standard in warfare and for those of you that thought that natural night adaptation might be comparable to a night vision device i'm going to have to burst your bubble in a tactical setting natural night vision doesn't hold a candle to any modern night vision device there are no advantages of using natural night vision over modern night vision devices in most cases so trying to compare natural night vision to actual night vision devices that's kind of a non-starter there's really no debate there any night vision device is superior to even the best knight adapted eyes especially since natural night adaptation doesn't last long in warfare all it takes is a flare or a few muzzle flashes and that natural night adaptation is pretty much useless and once natural night adaptation is compromised that's pretty much the ball game in a firefight you would then have to either use supplementary white light flares or revert to a night vision device anyway for the rest of the fight also night adapted eyes do not pair very well with night vision devices using a night vision device will decimate your natural night adaptation normally this doesn't matter because you have a night vision device so why would you need night adapted eyes that's why natural night vision has been all but forgotten in the tactical community for such a long time so all of this being considered does natural night adaptation have a place in modern warfare well that's up for you to decide based on your own situations and to help make that decision let me tell you how i myself and the rest of the team here utilize natural night adaptation for me the stars quite literally have to align for natural night adaptation to be preferred nights that are super bright or in locations where there is a lot of air glow in the atmosphere are great for this airglow also called night glow is a topic that we will be discussing further but this is a phenomenon that occurs in the atmosphere that ensures that the night sky is never completely dark think of this as light pollution that is caused by the planet itself ordinarily this is not noticed by most people but in areas with zero human light pollution the effect is quite spectacular and using air glow to observe things at night has some potential another scenario is if i'm in a location and my mission is to spot aircraft these conditions can be great for using natural night vision because i can see aircraft silhouetted against the night sky from a long way away and doing traditional air searches of sectors with a night vision device that has a very small field of view would result in the aircraft's detection being delayed but if i'm just chilling in an observation post looking at the entire sky at once i can see aircraft even blacked out aircraft from a long way away and by the time the guy with the night vision device sees it well it's already on you right this is especially the case when trying to spot quadcopters or other small uas platforms the ukrainian war has proven how deadly these things are and by the time you hear one you don't have time to scan the whole sky for it and since these are usually really close to you you've got to deal with the focus of your night vision device and the small field of view to find a really small moving target it's just easier to keep your eyes dark adapted and use the naked eye to spot these devices in most cases but again that's just me and my own limited experiences granted in most situations a night vision device even with a small field of view might be preferred by some for this task but sometimes you need to see the whole sky at once to track multiple aircraft multiple uas platforms and if the night sky allows naked eye observation to be effective i prefer that of course keeping a night vision device close by just in case another time that traditional night adaptation might be preferred is camouflage detection now this one gets a little bit into backyard flood science so bear with me under the right circumstances detecting camouflage is easier with a dark adapted naked eye than with a night vision device again this is not true on lights that are so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face but i myself have been quite surprised as to how much farther out i can detect a stationary camouflaged target with my naked eye than through my night vision device especially if you're not running dual tubes so you have severely reduced depth perception but again this is just my own experience coupled with the experiences of the rest of the team here so it's not an exact science just wanted to point this out because night vision devices are serious force multipliers on the field but they are not magic and an over reliance on technology is perhaps not the best mentality to have these days another situation in which natural night adaptation might be preferred is when using binoculars now you might say hang on you can't use binoculars at night well actually you can you just have to have the right kind of binoculars night adapted eyes and a bit of moonlight is also preferable if there's interest we can cover using binoculars at night in a separate video but by and large magnified optics and night vision optics don't really mix that well yes it can be done and i myself am especially fond of using magnifiers with night vision optics however just using a regular pair of binoculars with objective lenses that are as large as possible that's just way better regular binoculars are way more crisp and sharp than using a night vision device with a magnifier and it's easier to overcome focusing issues in the darkness which is a really big problem with most optics in the dark it's really hard to focus on really fine details at an extreme distance it's a lot easier to do with a pair of regular binoculars if the conditions are right you know even if binoculars require a lot more light to be effective and do not work in all cases i still prefer them if i can use them so all in all yes there are situations that having no night vision might be preferable but there are some general tips number one is to recognize that night vision devices are superior in 99 of situations and in 99 of night time conditions so keep your expectations realistic and number two because of number one always keep a night vision device handy in case your natural night adaptation gets ruined and you need to conduct operations immediately also number three if you do not have a night vision device there are things you can do to improve your natural night adaptation avoid white light entirely and only use as much red light as you need when dark adapting your eyes use red tinted goggles or red light only areas for at least 20 minutes followed by at least 10 minutes in the dark to maximize your night adaptation and in conditions where the moonlight or air glow is significant such as in remote areas or at sea using natural night adaptation might be preferred over using a night vision device particularly for observing aircraft or very large sectors the bottom line with all of these examples is that everything that's been said about night vision kind of gets blurred and this kind of goes back to the nature of modern warfare and the popularity of night vision devices on the internet just think back over the years and remember how the tactical community has changed things have changed and now night vision devices are solidified as an important piece of gear right up there with medical gear and rifles themselves but even though night vision devices are super popular these days we also have to keep things in perspective yes we here and countless others have been singing the praises of night vision as a concept and stressing the need for it in modern warfare as far as we're concerned there is no debate over night vision you definitely need it but in using such strong language we forget the second part of that sentence yes you need night vision devices but that alone will not save you and if there's one lesson that must be learned right now by all armed forces around the planet it is this the nature of warfare has changed in a fifth generation war rigidly adhering to paragraphs in a warfare publication will get you killed now more than ever all of the warfare doctrine that has been taught over the years is more of a guideline than actual rules especially in terms of things like night vision so the next time you're at ntc sitting in a fighting position with your battle buddy bored out of your mind try letting your battle buddy scan the sector with the thermals or night vision device and you take the binoculars and start night adapting your eyes and see what happens if you're a platoon leader on a training night patrol and the conditions are right try having every third guy run without their night vision device and see what benefits that brings or what problems it causes you might be surprised with the results or you might not you never know until you try the next time you're out training or even just camping and the moonlight is pretty bright try hiking without your night vision devices and see how it goes again until you try you'll never know how effective that might be this practice is vital to understanding the next topic knowing when to switch from night adapted naked eyes to a night vision device one of the biggest risks of using natural night vision is changing light conditions that go unnoticed in other words the night getting so dark that you can't see threats coming and because your eyes are dark adapted you don't notice understanding when dark adapted eyes become a liability instead of a benefit is a skill that will only come with practice too often our doctrine tells us that as soon as it gets dark go on nods but a person truly skilled in warfare will be able to operate without nods for quite some time and if necessary switch to nods at the exact moment that dark adapted eyes are no longer beneficial and this entire process being fluid natural and automatic without any degradation of combat capabilities is the goal that we should all work towards so try it out yourself and see what happens try honing your skills now while you still can especially knowing when it gets too dark and when it's time to switch to night vision devices and remember to have fun learning these skills too over the past couple of years we and many others have stressed how desperately we need to learn things but at the same time everyone gets to the point that they've grown at training opportunities especially since everything is a training event these days so keep it casual practice these skills when you're hurrying up and waiting or when you're otherwise not doing much you don't have to drag out a powerpoint full of bulletized learning objectives every time your team has 20 minutes of downtime and you don't have to live your life by memorizing warfare publications that are 20 years out of date sometimes questioning those manuals in a productive professional way is the better move so try it out and see what works you never know sometimes it might be more beneficial to fight in the shade

//The Wire//2300Z November 12, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: FORD CARRIER STRIKE GROUP ARRIVES IN CARIBBEAN. APPLE ROLLS OUT DIGITAL ID. JOBS REPORT FOR OCTOBER NOT PUBLISHED DUE TO GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Caribbean: Overnight the USS GERALD FORD (CVN-78) arrived in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility, and is expected to be in position to carry out operations in theatre within a couple of days. Analyst Comment: Venezuela continues wartime preparations, same as before, with various internal militia and homeland defensive efforts being publicized over the past few weeks. Most of these efforts appear to mostly be just for show, but preparations continue all around nonetheless. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - This afternoon the White House stated that a handful of financial reports for the month of October might not be released due to the government shutdown. Press Secretary Leavitt stated that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report and various other jobs reports might not ever be released for last month, due to federal employees not being on the job to gather the data at the time in which it was most valuable (the data needed to make the jobs reports accurate must be gathered in real time throughout the month, and not in retrospect). Analyst Comment: At a time where the White House is facing increased scrutiny, this isn't a great omen since this is extremely important financial data to consider on the general state of the economy. Economic indicators are also a data point to consider even in the world of national defense, to set conditions and expectations on the homefront before a military campaign, for instance. Now, right at the crux of major economic concerns, the data simply isn't available because federal workers stopped doing their jobs during the shutdown. The data probably does exist, but by the time it's compiled and released it will be stale, and we'll be on to the next crisis. USA: This morning Apple announced the release of a Digital ID product, intended to digitize identification documents such as American passport data. The plan involves partnering with the Transportation Security Administration to integrate Digital ID efforts into air travel around the United States. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Apple's efforts are not to create a universal new identification scheme, but rather to digitize identity documents that already exist. TSA in particular has already had their own varying levels of subscription-based identity-check procedures for a while now, so in the grand scheme of things this has been coming for a long time. Of course, any Digital ID effort requires universal acceptance to work. It is not the ability to save an ID on one's phone that is new...it's the widespread adoption in such a short period of time that is the more concerning detail. This, coupled with the note that this is set up within the Apple Wallet ecosystem, has caused even more eyebrow-raising since it's not a huge jump to speculate that this ID scheme will be linked to finances at some point. In this case, Apple announced that this plan is already streamlined to work with TSA for air travel at over 250 airports around the nation. This plan was announced about two weeks ago, so in just that time, we've gone from announcement to implementation to full integration with TSA in ways that haven't really been done before. Individual states are also partnering with Apple to integrate their Driver's Licenses into the app, and 12x states/territories have done so already. As such data security concerns have abounded...while Americans have been watching the developments of a Digital ID system being implemented in the United Kingdom, a very similar system was being worked on here at home. But because it's a private company digitizing already-existing documents, less attention has been placed on this practice. However it is worthy to note just how quickly this has all come about, and the very obvious shift toward Digital ID practices being not just a problem for Europe, but for the American homeland as well. It must be noted that this Digital ID effort is not simply the effort of a private company, this is a government project too. This initiative has *only* come about due to partnerships with US governmental agencies (like the TSA), which could be revoked at any time by the White House, since the TSA is nested under the Department of Homeland Security. Apple may be the administrator of this plan, but at the end of the day this is a government program. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

hello again everyone welcome back to the underground so this is the intelligence briefing for 12 september 2021 and this is being recorded the day prior on september 11th so before we jump into the weather i'll have a quick sort of digression to make right quick which will make a lot of sense later but we're in the process of writing an episode on this exact topic but i am personally not really convinced that it's going to be a worthwhile effort um and i but i do think this is something that is worth touching on right now so here's the short version of it as our reach here has expanded a lot of people do not know because they just they just simply don't know or they don't understand the nature of these kinds of briefings a lot of people have been kind of treating these briefings like we are journalists and that's actually not quite right actually within the intelligence community it's actually a pretty decently strong insult to call an analyst a journalist right it's something that like if you go to a schoolhouse and the you know your intelligence instructor is going to yell at you they're going to call you a journalist right uh for for messing something up because that's kind of it's not a good thing to be an ad to be a journalist if you're trying to be an analyst right and this is something that unless you were in that intelligence world you would not know so we're not offended by it at all i just wanted to point it out to give kind of like a little taste of what this world is like so when it comes to the differences between intelligence and journalism there are a couple of key distinctions for one intelligence is processed information right information is not intelligence right in intelligence is processed information so to have an intelligence product it's going to be comprised of information that is processed by an analyst using the intel cycle and a whole host of other analytical techniques right we have a whole lot of processes little tricks of the trade and things like that to make sure that the information is as least biased as possible to make sure that it's considering all the factors considering the source veracity to make sure your sources are reliable and stuff like that right it's a whole process right this takes years to learn even for professional analysts right the schools for military intelligence analysts are almost a year long right and they really should be longer because most intel analysts coming out of the schoolhouses these days know absolutely nothing about the trade so when it comes to journalism really journalism should be just the facts right journalism should be right this is the ideal world of journalism is that it should be just the raw details unprocessed unfiltered of what's going on right with no analysis on it whatsoever now of course that's not the way the world works you're not going to find any journalistic agency on the planet anymore that does not put their own analysis or opinion in there and try to disguise that opinion as being a fact right whereas on the other side of the aisle intelligence a good analyst like the rule of thumb for analysts right is that they're going to tell you what they know what they don't know and what they think right and that distinction is of course not always explicitly stated like an analyst is not going to if you ask an analyst for their opinion they're not going to tell you okay here's what i know here's what i know here's what i don't know and here's what i think about it it's going to be a mix of of vocabulary right to get that whole process out so that's something to consider and especially to consider that again if journalism includes opinion like if a journalistic agency is including opinion in their article it's not true journalism anymore right even the way that journalistic agencies right now are reporting the raw facts right you may read an article and think that it's reporting raw facts but they're cherry picking which facts to give you so even that is not true journalism right they need to be as impartial as possible but that's not going to happen so i just wanted to point out this distinction and break things down a little bit to hope to kind of clear things up a little bit when it comes to information that we provide in these briefings right so this is why we use things like probabilistic language and you know linguistic markers to differentiate between what is known as fact and what we think is going to happen in the future and stuff like that right this gets really complicated but really i just wanted to just to point out the distinction between the two and to kind of show that hey this is not just me reading news to you guys right this is something a little bit more uh a little bit more structured even though you might not see that structure right so let's go ahead and jump into the weather all right so weather over the next 12 hours is going to be quite good for really any isr asset again if you're new to the channel and you don't understand why i'm talking about cloud levels and the weather and things like that we have specific dedicated videos to that and it's probably pretty important to start realizing why this information is important right now so up along the canadian border there's going to be some some patchy bits of coverage uh low-level cloud ceilings right as as one might expect this time of year but for the most of the united states it's going to be absolutely perfect weather if there were to be an isr asset overhead so again not saying there are any isr assets overhead i'm just saying that this is something that it's good to be uh good to get in the habit of knowing right also for the next 18 hours here's your uh mid to high level cloud coverage again up by the canadian border going to have a cloud ceiling a cloud deck rather from really low altitude all the way up as you can see the cloud ceiling is going to top out pretty high so really bad weather for isr along the northern border but for the rest of the country for the next next 18 hours it's going to be a drone sensor operator's dream and moving on to no tams so if you don't know what no tams are we also have a video on the same exact topic so make sure to check that out but the big three that we're tracking today are of course all three presidential ones first one is biden is going to long beach on monday to check out newsome's like final rally second one is biden is going to boise idaho for some kind of presidential you know event and the third one is of course biden's standard vacation weekend no tam that's from friday all the way to sunday this one pops up pretty much every single weekend uh because biden flies home for the weekend almost every single weekend just so that if you weren't aware of that that one's a pretty standard one so at this point so i know that this map looks quite scary right to start with but i just wanted to highlight that unrest is going to be kind of likely in pretty much all states uh based on the elephant of the room reporting that we're going to get to in a minute but the big ones that are going on right now of course portland is still very kinetic when it comes to antifa slash blm slash whatever you want to call it now behavior and protesting slash demonstrating slash rioting in portland that's pretty common at this point also new york is still having a bit of resistance when it comes to the medical mandates and things like that and of course phoenix is still uh still going to be a potential location for uh some civil unrest as we move forward into the election audit results so before we get into domestic policy for a minute i just wanted to touch a little bit on afghanistan afghanistan is still on our radar we are still doing what we can but based on what's happened here in the united states over the past week we are significantly shifting focus to support the american people here at home right now this is not pleasant by any means there are still thousands of americans still stuck in afghanistan with no way out right now the bigger issue that has been sort of thrown in our laps is what the federal regime is doing so we're having to weigh where we're putting our resources and we're having to determine and balance and try to figure out what where we can best help people right so we're thinking what's a bigger risk right now having thousands of americans brutally murdered by the taliban or hundreds of millions of americans being forced out of a job and not able to buy food for their children we think at this point that we can do more good here on the home front so we're stepping up our efforts to data dump our collective knowledge in such a way as to help americans here at home have capabilities when things get bad again i would like to stress that we're still keeping an eye on afghanistan we're not going to let this one go but there's just nothing we can do right now there's very little intelligence picture of the ground private people are being arrested for trying to go to afghanistan to try to help things out um it's just it's become a not good situation and like i've been pointing out for the past few videos on afghanistan every day that goes by we're just facing diminishing returns and now our returns are practically nothing so if another nation besides the united states of america decides to step up their their diplomatic efforts to try to get people back and and to try to help people across land borders and things like that we will shift to helping that but right now the united states is simply the only per only entity they can help and they're not for the most part so a garbage situation all around but we're gonna have to make the decision to kind of shift our focus here to where we can do some good so let's go ahead and push forward into logistics so not a lot to add to the map to a specific geographic area but i didn't want to speak about the microchip shortage again just me personally i drove around my local area yesterday and every single car lot about a dozen different car lots from used cars to uh full dealerships of of every major auto brand in the united states every single one had less than a quarter of their lot full like so most of the ones that i could see had about five cars in their lot and that's something i have never seen i've never personally seen that never been driving around i wasn't even looking for it and i just happened to notice hey that that's a that's a parking lot like oh i don't notice it because it's usually full of cars for sale well there's not any cars there there are not as many cars for sale now actually gm just announced that they're closing five of their plants five or six depending on which press release you read and they're laying off they're gonna be laying off 15 of their workforce 15 more percent of their workforce and this is going to result in the majority of gm's north american production capabilities being completely offline due to this chip shortage they simply cannot make the vehicles their flagship vehicles anymore because the microchips are just not there so that is a huge thing to remember moving forward into this you know whatever we're going through is that this chip shortage is not getting better it's getting much much worse and also i wanted to point out the kind of strange shortage the fda has declared a global shortage on their website of estradiol uh i don't know what that why the reasoning for that is i know that this drug is used to treat um menopausal symptoms and things like that but i don't know why the shortage it might be related to some of the medical stuff going around in the world but uh for whatever reason i just wanted to point it out it's on the website you can see the source the link will be at the end of this as always but yeah kind of an odd one we'll try to figure out why this drug is in short supply but if anybody knows drop into the comments section because that's kind of an interesting thing to figure out why this particular drug is in shortage so moving forward into critical infrastructure concerns now this one uh this slide is going to be mostly empty because i have another slide i was going to be talking about this in a minute but really though the one that isn't related to the big topic for today is hurricane ida's aftermath is still impacting things uh petroleum oil lubricant your classic pol shipments uh have been affected and repair efforts are going are still underway there's still a lot of fallout from that so just just expect some fallout from that and then moving into significant governmental actions the first one i wanted to mention is the military medical procedure mandate so a lot of people a lot of soldiers particularly were trying to figure out okay how can i request religious exemptions well um it turns out that a lot of soldiers are finding out that their medical exemptions are not working they're not being approved um so a lot of commands have been observed you can follow on social media a lot of other you know military-centric accounts and uh they've got a lot of evidence regarding commands saying you know f your religion it doesn't matter um all stuff stuff like that so that is a huge thing that that's happening in the military a lot of people were kind of hoping that they would the dod would offer them an out but now it looks like that out is is is not a real can a real thing this this we kind of mentioned in the beginning that hey they're not going to approve these religious exemptions because they need total compliance in the military so we're seeing additional military officers resign their commissions over this very quite high ranking officers actually resign their commissions over this and it's going to be interesting to see what goes forward but yeah the military they're not going to get these religious exemptions it's probably it's going to be very few and far between the people that actually successfully get the religious exemption to avoid uh getting this experimental medical procedure also the who has issued a pdf a a document that outlines their guidelines for creating digital medical passports right so what we've been fearing or been uh concerned about for quite a few months this digital passport system this is going to come into fruition quite soon uh right now it doesn't look like they're they're the infrastructure is in place but just keep in mind that the who is definitely on board with all this totalitarian stuff i have the link for the pdf in the sources so you can download it and take a look at it it's kind of a long thing to go over but it's pretty it's pretty dystopian once you start reading it you're like oh my god uh and then thirdly finally this is an interesting one it looks like news agencies journalistic agencies are completely forging articles from the ground up now so you might have seen the reports going around that hospitals were being forced to turn away gunshot victims to treat people who have been who have overdosed on that particular drug that's on your screen right now that i can't read out due to youtube censorship and it turns out that article was completely false actually the hospital in question that the article talked about i had to issue a press statement which you can read for yourselves right there they've not treated any overdoses from this particular medicine and the entire article was false the guy they interviewed dr jason mckillia is they basically they're they're throwing him under the bus because he basically fabricated everything that he said uh in the news article so interesting that we're not even uh news articles and news agencies are not even pretending to hide their their bias anymore so yeah very interesting to say the least and moving forward into the impacts from uh everything that has been announced over the past 24-48 hours so everybody is aware that biden has mandated uh the jab for every company that has over 100 people working there in the united states um as of it's really vague because there has not been as of right now there has not been an executive order actually signed so we can't tell you exactly what the what the mandate the tyrannical mandate says however we do have press statements and releases which everyone has been circulating online this is like the story of the year right so you can read all that for yourself but what i wanted to do today is not just share outrage over this but kind of point out what this means what are the impacts going to be from this so buckle up this is going to be kind of a long one uh this is going to affect much more than what people think and and in me going down all of these industries that are going to be affected by this i hope to point out or at least show that we're we're going to have to either the the united states is either just going to de facto not comply with this or court systems around the country are going to overturn this pretty much immediately because there's no way our society can function like this with the amount of resistance we're seeing so the image here the map shows the number of states which are going to be affected which is all 50 states and the yellow striping there uh the the yellow cross hatching states are the ones that have declared that they are not complying with biden's mandates so let's get into the things to think about as we move forward and why this it might not seem like a big deal but by the end of the slide you should see how this is kind of a very big deal so the number one thing that's going to be affected is food processing industry right the people that actually package up canned goods and put them out those are companies that are very very large and their employees are the kinds of people that are not going to participate in this kind of tyranny so you're going to see probably a lot of layoffs or a lot of people just outright quit and also the firearms industry the firearms industry particularly smaller companies right that are not big like national names but they have they are very large manufacturers they're going to be affected as well because a lot of these places have more than 100 employees and i can tell you that the kinds of people again that work for those companies if their company says hey you've got to get this jab or you're going to get you know fired well guess what they're going to get fired so um that's going to impact things as well and already we're facing a everybody's knowing about the ammunition shortage and the firearm shortage of the past what like year and a half two years now so yeah we'll see how that goes and uh if companies are going to choose to not comply with this you know it's going to be interesting to see also the shipping industry so everyone's uh kind of focusing on the uh federal postal service right the usps right um that's kind of a gray area right now because there's a lot of false information going around about is the usps exempt are they not exempt nobody really knows because at first the white house said that they were exempt and then a press statement was issued saying oh no they're not exempt from this new one right they're exempt from the federal employees uh being mandated but they're not exempt from this hundred person per company like policy so it's really confusing right now however what is not confusing at all is the other shipping agencies in the united states like ups and fedex and dhl those companies obviously have to comply with this right or they're it's it applies to them so man you know it's going to be interesting to see hey are these employees going to walk away or what's going on with that also pol petroleum oil lubricants that entire industry like man find me a an oil roughneck that voted for joe biden right and find me an oil rough you know a rough neck that's going to that's going to accept this mandate and not just walk away right look i know that a lot of people are are financially desperate right now like man isn't everybody but man the whole energy sector when it comes to petroleum oil and lubricants in this country is is very much run uh or at least the bulk of the workers are very conservative and they're not going to take this tyranny um even it's it's the medical part is kind of irrelevant at that point also the trucking industry right 70 of all the food in the united states is transported on trucks right and france just highlighted the importance of a national trucking strike you know it's so there you go it could that's this could happen right this could be a very huge impact right it's not like you know trucking people who get into trucking are gender studies majors right they're they're you know working people right also public utilities same vein right it's going to be like i doubt that any lineman working in any public utility in the country is a fan of biden's policies so as a matter of fact we have direct evidence you know whenever he shows up to somewhere like that people don't like him so much so again going to be a huge factor moving forward also manufacturing pretty much anything that gets made is a very large company that's going to be subject to these things also agriculture look at the farming industries now you might say okay well a lot of farming in the united states is done by small farmers or farming entities that are like contracted out or if it's just you know machinery has made it so that you don't have to have a whole lot of employees for some kinds of crops well look at it this way you still need a lot of crop you still need a lot of people for things like you know produce you know potatoes things like that you still need a lot of manual labor and the people that would be participating in that are not exactly going to take this tyranny lying down right also retail stores like hey people already you know retail working retail is already a soul-sucking job as is and if you're going to force people to get this procedure you know people are just going to quit right i mean that's what we think you know also engineering same thing anything that gets made or has to get engineered we're already seeing uh a lot of engineering companies at least this is rumor at this stage right we're already seeing a lot of engineering companies like people who are engineers saying hey i'm not i'm not coming into work if you mandate this so same thing with the auto industry like the auto unions in this country man like sure the leaderships of these agencies might not be they might comply with this kind of stuff but the actual people that work there hmm i doubt that also construction man pretty much any manual labor job right anything that requires a human being to actually work hard for a living is going to be impacted by this same thing with the telecommunications industry right the people who not just repair you know cell towers and downed lines and things like that with people who sell you cell phones and run call centers and make sure data servers are up and running and things like that even the aerospace industry like boeing lockheed even nasa we're seeing a lot of rumors floating around on social media that are about as unconfirmed as you can get but a lot of people who are allegedly working for nasa are saying that a lot of nasa employees are planning a massive walk out in protest and not just like a walkout like they're quitting and that's going to heavily impact nasa's artemis mission that's coming up so i don't know if that's true or not i bet you know again it's about as unconfirmed as it can get but hey like it's kind of interesting that these kind of things are impacting it also the financial world like hey name a financial institution in the united states that has less than 100 people like not going to not going to happen right also pharmaceuticals like not just we we tend to look at things like the medical industry and we see things like you know nurses dancing on tick tock and then the other medical tyranny stuff but look at the look at the actual day-to-day side of the pharmaceutical market like people who make tylenol right you know people who make ibuprofen stuff like that man it's it's going to it's going to uh be heavily impacted right because we use so many pharmaceuticals on a day-to-day basis that man it's just going to if people decide to walk away from that job that job field man we're going to be screwed same thing with the entertainment industry now again you're going to have celebrities like celebrity like we have seen like man that's a rabbit hole i really don't want to go down but we've seen most celebrities are extremely politically liberal and are fans of what the biden regime is doing however i'm not talking about the celebrities i'm talking about the sound guy right the set designers right the the people that the the behind the scenes that make hollywood exist right are they going to put up with this tyranny for much longer i don't know um but they're definitely going to be affected by this same thing with industrial machining right things that like the behind the scenes of how parts get made for companies right not necessarily the company itself a company can be tyrannical right but but look at the uh look at the the parts that actually go into making things like that also the chemical industry like hey we already have a chlorine shortage in the united states of america and there's only like one plant in the united states that makes chlorine so at least now i actually think there are three or four but that one being offline down south from the hurricane earlier man you know we're starting to talk about hey how many chemicals do you use on a daily basis and who what is the political ideology of those people that make those chemicals something to think about for sure also things like waste management right like you know public utilities again going to be heavily impacted by this and these are different industries that are are are going to be good places for resistance for people same thing with the people who make medical devices like think about it this way the people that make the scalpels the things that people that make the bandages that make the gloves right the people that make the pacemakers right those companies right the doctors can be liberal tyrants and refuse to treat patients but what about the people that make all of the gear that they need to do so um interesting huh things like mining like industrial mineral like coal mining and other precious metals and and things that are needed for the tech world good luck finding a biden voter in any coal mine in america right also the rubber industry like man you think about if if everybody who made tires decided to either quit from their job or get fired because they're not taking this medical procedure like that's going to be a huge thing same thing with steel workers man we've already seen steel workers get in biden's face and scream at him for being a tyrant when he was campaigning like can you imagine the the sentiments now among the steelworkers unions in this country holy cow if they decided to not make any buildings man good luck with that same thing with rail like like i mentioned 70 percent of all food just transported on trucks but 17 of all the food in the country is transported by train so now you're talking the super majority right 77 of all the food in the united states is either transported by train or truck you know hey we're starting to see how much this can impact society right even things like packaging right we've already had packaging shortages here in the united states from china right so imagine the people that make the wrappers for things for for packaging food for packaging retail items and things like that it's going to be a very widespread the impact is going to be very widespread so i know that this is kind of a very long digression but i just wanted to point out all the industries that we might not think of being important until they're important so this is why uh i think this is why i myself am so concerned about this medical mandate thing because it this has why this has more this is touching more americans than people realize 100 million people man that's a little less than a third of the population in the united states is is going to be impacted by this this is a gigantic leap from all the other tyranny stuff that biden has done like this is a huge step that i don't think a lot of people quite realize how significant it is and since it is such a huge gigantic leap um i don't know how this is going to shake out i don't know if this is even going to be this might be one of those things where biden decrees it the regime decrees it and just nobody follows it like this might be one of those mass you know civil disobedience things simply because even if everyone wanted to comply with it even if every company was tyrannical in the united states which they're not they're not a lot of companies are tyrannical but a lot of them aren't most of the ones that make daily life happen are not really tyrannical uh if those co even if those companies those private industries wanted to be tyrannical the logistical nightmare of having to manage this man i don't know if this is going to be even possible even if everybody wanted to do it so while yes i understand the outrage i myself had to had to step back from the computer for a second when i saw that drop and uh just kind of think for a minute because man this is a big deal and again i just really don't know that this is well for one i have no faith that the courts will actually overturn any of this right my i'm not hanging my hat on any court system in the united states ever doing the right thing ever again or or even doing what the law says right at this point we're talking about violating nuremberg codes here you know which again doesn't really matter so um i'm not really hanging my hat again on a judicial court saying that this is going to be unconstitutional like they might the supreme court might come back and say hey this is this is like the most unconstitutional thing i've ever done but i i don't have any faith that they're going to do that uh what i think is a lot more interesting is trying to figure out like hey what what kinds of industries are going to have people either quit or walk out and most importantly now here's the other kicker what kind of industries what kind of markets what kind of economy is going to spring up because of this right we've already seen australia we've already seen australia adopt the mentality of there's going to be an economy for those who have gotten the the medical procedure and there's going to be an economy for those who haven't australia is going full-blown that model and the united states political regime clearly wants to follow australia's steps in that regard uh however i'm not so sure they want that like i i think they're i think that this might be a be careful what you wish for you know daddy government situation because man like look at the political ideologies of the people that make this country run and work right it's not like there's a whole lot of gender studies majors out there working at an oil pipeline right or working at a shipping terminal or things like that you know so i don't know that this is going to be something that's even feasible or possible so that's why i wanted to kind of talk about this today and get this brief out is very rough brief out because i think yeah look i understand the outrage but i'm also trying to walk it back in my own mind of saying like how in the heck are they going to do this so yeah i think that you know there's an old saying right that watch what happens when the people who don't want to be involved get involved and i think this this particular benchmark right this mandate uh is going to be the most chance we're ever going to have for seeing something like that happen right because now all of those people who have been like passively resisting or or just disagreeing but kind of complying passively right all those people are now being told you're going to get a medical procedure or you're not going to be able to feed your children and i think that we underestimate people's resistance level when things hit them that close to home right the federal government is making the assumption that since people have not risen up yet and since they hold a monopoly on federal agencies you know like there's federal agencies there's federal agents watching this video right now right so since they hold the monopoly on the intelligence community and the ability to arrest anyone for anything and you know there you go they think that people won't resist and i'm not so sure about that i will agree that people have not resisted as much as i would have liked but at the same time man there hasn't been anything that has happened so far that has touched so many people on such a personal level um even when it comes to things like you like you can give them an out right like like one of the reported parts that we don't know right because we haven't seen the actual document yet but one of the reported things is oh okay well if you don't want the the mandatory uh medical procedure you can just get tested every week and uh that yeah there you go you're gonna have to be tested every week well i don't think people are going to do that anymore i think people were doing that in the beginning but now i think that i really do think that there's going to be a significant backlash from this and i don't know how it's going to manifest itself i don't think i don't think any kind of conflict like like hard conflict is going to break out i might be wrong on that but i do think that there's going to be um you know civil disobedience is going to become cool again for a large portion of the country now that all of that being said i do want to throw out a few random predictions moving forward for people who are rejecting this medical tyranny right now i would like to preface that by the usual disclaimer of i don't have a good way to church this up and make it pretty on the slide because right now i'm really just briefing for speed and not for looks so forgive me if this is kind of a random way of laying things out also what i'm about to say is probably going to trigger some people and a lot more will disagree that's that's perfectly fine i myself hope that i'm wrong what i'm about to say is simply my opinion based on my own observations over the past year combined with a decent background knowledge right just this is just theory at this point again i hope that i'm completely wrong in all of this but since a lot of people have been asking what's next right like what are what are the next things they're going to go for uh here is a short and haphazard answer as to what i and the rest of the staff here who have been brainstorming this think the immediate future will bring the first one is interstate travel is going to be restricted i don't know how this is going to manifest itself but i've already seen inklings of this manifesting itself and it's already happened on a few last year right so i think that this is going to happen probably very very soon i don't know how this is all going to again manifest itself but my guess is that it's going to happen exactly the same as the first time that individual states put up checkpoints on their borders this will almost certainly be a federal decree slash mandate whatever you want to call it but it will probably be left up to the individual states to figure out how to enforce uh this way conservative states or states that are resisting will resist but liberal states will happily comply and this would set the precedent for berlin wall style boundaries between states right maybe not a physical wall like you know walling off the parts of the united states that are that are jabbed and the unjabbed right i i don't think that's going to happen uh in that way because we can't even build a border offense along our own national border but i do think the mentality of you know east berlin versus west berlin is going to be you know red states versus blue states that's going to be more solidified than it already is when this interstate travel stuff comes to bear and if i was a tyrant that's exactly what i would do you have to cut people's ability to travel between the states that's a key part of what tyrants and dictators do to maintain control in their country also i would be very surprised if the irs did not institute some kind of special tax my guess is it will probably be a flat rate tax for everyone who is part of the resistance right and it's probably going to happen pretty soon right you're going to have to pay a tax in order to be unjabbed right this is something that the federal government can easily do right when was the last time a court overturned a tax all right it's just it's just not something that's going to happen right people can complain but you know really taxes are something that the federal government can easily do without really any oversight whatsoever also along those lines uh pretty much all federal assistance medicare medicaid disability and maybe maybe even federal retirement plans will be cut for those people who resist again this is something that could be easily done by the federal government because they are the ones the executive branch is what controls this stuff anyway right so yeah that's that would i would not be surprised if that happened as well uh also air travel air travel is something that's easily easily regulated because you know the faa is federal right so uh you will not be able to get on a plane without that card right that already is happening in the with the majority of airlines right we've already have more tyrannical stuff happening with the airlines than with any other mode of transportation in the united states so it would make absolutely perfect sense that you're not going to be able to travel anywhere without being jabbed and in order to track all of this there's going to be a database right we predicted this months ago but the federal regime is not going to be relying on a paper card for much longer so again we've talked quite a bit about this but this is probably going to happen because right now there is almost zero way to detect forgeries right there is no database sure a couple of states i think like california and new york have actual databases but they're state-based databases i might be wrong on that i can't quite remember but federally there isn't a database to track who has been jabbed and who has not been jabbed of course they're trying to track that and the companies themselves are moving forward and trying to track that as well but really it's ineffective so they can't really determine who's been jabbed and who hasn't uh from a computer they have to look at your physical card um so this brings that that guidance that i mentioned earlier that waho policy on digital passports that kind of makes everything make a lot more sense now right and this digital federal database type stuff or even before the digital means gets rolled out this is going to manifest itself with uh food control um just like france and just like a lot of other european nations australia right you can't go to a grocery store unless you show your card right this is probably going to be in the form of a federal mandate which individual grocery stores will have to enforce on their own um like i mentioned france did this australia did this and it would be very easy for the biden regime to do now as to how many people and companies would resist this i don't know um probably a lot more than even in france uh though and of course that's not including a state you know the conservative resistance states now uh are going to come out with an opposing law that says oh by the way it's illegal to do this it's illegal to ask for somebody's you know like and then it becomes a states rights versus federal rights thing and we we know how that all shakes out right so i don't know how this is going to manifest itself but i would i would bet this is going to happen very very very soon and other things that people might not realize are things like vehicle registration so now we start realizing okay when the rubber meets the road how is this enforcement going to go out right now we understand why people like us have been concerned with things like automated license plate readers right it would be very easy to tie someone's medical status to their driver's license which is in turn tied to their vehicle registration so you drive by an automated license plate reader and your you know your license plate is flagged as being unclean right and there you go you get pulled over and you can't travel so again that might be a stretch right now right that's just that sounds like some some truly dystopian stuff but hey i'm just i'm just throwing out some theories right and due to the colonial pipeline false flag attack excuse me cyber attack the american people should have learned the value of stockpiling fuel right because the federal government absolutely learned how access to fuel can a society pretty much instantly again something we're already seeing is medical care right medical care will not be available to the unclean right this is already manifesting itself by doctors refusing to treat unjabbed patients but it could get much worse it could get as severe as you calling 9-1-1 for an emergency medical condition some kind of emergency right and they won't send an ambulance unless that person is jabbed it could manifest itself that way i don't know but i'm just giving you again stuff that could happen also coming back to travel with more and more nations opening up around the world the us might even go so far as to revoke the passports of the unclean right so that we can't leave the country again this one might seem to be a bit extreme but man look at what's already happened and revoking a passport is well within the capabilities of the executive branch it's just a tiny tiptoe for the regime and the regime has already made a gigantic leap into the illegal territory of telling people they can't work without the jab so i would personally expect passports to be revoked for people who are unstuck right also alternative currencies like you know bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will most likely be banned very very soon as much as they can ban it that's definitely going to happen i can say with using our probabilistic language i can say that that's almost certain cryptocurrencies that cannot be tracked by governments are not acceptable to this regime so they're just going to ban it again as much as they can the nature of crypto makes it hard to ban but they have already strangled and manipulated the market to make it really difficult to exchange crypto for fiat currencies without being tracked so that's going to continue as well like i remember when you can make a coin base account with no with nothing and now you need freaking like tax documents to create a coinbase account right like it's easier to file your taxes than it is to create a coinbase account now so stuff like that's going to continue so i would personally expect like any entity that can be put in jail right like somebody that you can actually grab right like the developers of apps or the people who own domain names for cryptocurrency exchange sites like that's they're going to to put pressure on those people so yeah we're also going to see a crackdown on the resistance right everyone who disagrees with the biden regime has already been branded a terrorist that has already happened right though it is still rument at this time we're also seeing reports that the dhs fbi and secret service specifically launched in operation to surveil people who opposed biden's remarks right meaning that they knew people would resist to biden announcing this this mandate so they collaborated ahead of time to catch anyone being stupid online and saying violent stuff so they could bag them that way that's that's actually really smart we're actually really not that smart but it does show that time and time again it has been confirmed that the federal government entraps people whether it is a group of a dozen fbi agents that convince a handful of goobers to take over michigan or if it's a 15 year old child with a mental disability federal agency's main job right now is to entrap people just like history's oldest and most infamous secret police agencies so please be smart about which outlet you choose to express yourself in because we do not live in the same world we used to anymore rights have no bearing on our current situation if you understand that there are now consequences for exercising our rights and you have taken steps to mitigate those negative consequences that's good but just remember don't get complacent because these mandates are coming for everyone based on how quickly we went from the military has to get it now federal workers have to get it and now anyone who works at a company with over 100 people has to get it not a lot of times laps we're talking like two weeks here has elapsed we went to a full-scale textbook authoritarian dictatorship really dang quickly and we do not expect this speed to slow down anytime soon so as depressing as that is to end on let's just keep in mind it to keep your chin up and be aware of this kind of stuff and start taking steps to mitigate your risks and prepare for basically having to live off grid even though you're on the grid because things like medical care public utilities uh property ownership food supplies that's not going to be available to you in this new market system they're creating so moving forward into international issues uh there was interestingly enough there was a coup in guinea which is right there on the map for those of you who don't know where that's at small african nation really not a whole lot goes on there however there is a lot of minerals specifically bauxite and aluminum so this is something that's interesting to keep an eye on because basically every nation in africa has their own little mineral wealth that is very important to the creation of other technological devices around the world which is why dictatorships spring up in africa so quickly but this military coup the the short version of it is is that the president was actually a dictator he had changed their constitution to allow himself to remain in office and uh the military special forces came in deposed him uh kidnapped him uh he's now under arrest and set up a military junta so even though it kind of seems like these guys did the right thing by overthrowing their government we'll see how it works out because these military juntas in africa really man they they really turn out to be some bad stuff at the end of the day i don't think i've ever seen a revolution in africa work um anyone that has succeeded has has changed so with the exception of maybe tunisia tunisia has kind of escaped that natural resource curse but moving on to france uh this is an interesting one uh there was an incident of nuclear terrorism in france uh there was and this is of course all according to the french press and the french police so take it with a grain of salt but on august 26 a guy was arrested with significant amounts of uranium powder that he bought online on ebay and which he was planning to make a nuclear device either some kind of radiological device or dirty bomb or or something like that it is unlikely that he would have been able to make a thermonuclear device but um with the amounts that i've seen have been disclosed that he had there's no way he had enough but it is interesting um now of course the media is was very quick the french media was very quick to point out that the police also found far-right extremism things like articles of clothing uh swastikas things like that all around his apartment as his house but um i don't know if that's true or not so but it is kind of interesting that hey you know these these long-standing things that analysts have been looking out for like nuclear terrorism this this old school stuff is definitely still still an option for a lot of bad dudes around the planet so very interesting to say the least also china has proceeded with their afghanistan development they have they're creating their their new um one road trade agreement and that is uh going to help out both china and afghanistan uh china is not doing uh there's a lot of interesting things with regard to china economically like just the other day they opened up their strategic oil reserves for the first time ever so that's not really something that a healthy economy does so as much as we like to shout the china boogeyman um sort of you know rhetoric it is interesting to note to keep china in perspective when it comes to a military conflict like we you know my personal opinion and really everybody else who works here uh our opinion is um that china is is going to be our next conflict uh that's just something that we've come to expect now how soon is that going to be i don't know and is it going to be a just conflict i don't know that either but i'm reading the writing on the wall and our entire military seems to be preparing for that and so the military-industrial complex will make it so if china doesn't make the first move at some point so something to keep in mind china is doing china things finally before we end for the day here is just another reminder to take a break every now and then even for me just reading my own slides today i can feel my blood pressure rising so just make sure to take care of yourself uh yeah things are going to get much much worse uh and we meant it when we said months ago that we are going to need smart skilled and dedicated people to help us get out of this mess when things really get bad and we will have

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for July 20th through the 26th of 2025. Continuing the trend of the past few years. It has been once again a very busy week. But unfortunately this week a lot of these issues I would much rather ignore have to do with national security. So I kind of have to pay attention to it. And as much as I really hesitate to do so, I would encourage everyone to pay a little bit more attention to this stuff this week because the potential for this to get out of hand is rather high. Of course, I am referring to mostly the data breach regarding the T app here in the United States, which we'll unfortunately have to get into in a moment. Also, the Epstein scandal in Washington DC continues to develop, so we'll have to cover that a little bit as well. Our friends across the pond have had a similar rough go of it this week with the online safety act causing a ruckus and mostly because the great British firewall is now online. And of course, we have another war to follow in Southeast Asia, this time between Cambodia and Thailand. And that war is heating up. So without further ado, let's go ahead and start digging into the rather unfortunate story this week, which is the T app data breach. Occasionally, I'll stumble across some information that I really, really wish that I did not learn or know or figure out. And this is most certainly one of those cases. So, what is the T app and what is this data breach all about? Well, this app was created solely for the purpose of allowing women to register for an account, mostly with just the goal of talking about men that they know andor were trying to date. This was mostly created and built and advertised as a dating app, but it was most certainly not. So, the name of the app itself kind of gives it away. Unfortunately, I've learned that the term T is a modern-day slang synonym for the word gossip. So, that should tell you basically what this this app was designed to do from the ground up. So, the general user experience for this app was for women to create an account and only women. I should note that very clearly right up front because that's important. Only women were allowed to have accounts on this app. And what they could do is create profiles like MySpace pages back in the day for men that they knew, all without the men knowing about it. So dudes could have a whole baseball card about themselves on this website and uh all the women in their life that they knew sharing information about them, personal details, rumors, uh unsubstantiated slander, all kinds of stuff. and they would have no way of knowing that that they had an entire targeting profile built about them on this app. That's why this situation is so unfortunate because it's just horrific to imagine that such an app would ever actually exist. But it did and it got around 2 million users uh within the United States to register for this app uh since its launch I think a couple of weeks ago. So, this rapidly became the number one downloaded app in the United States uh for a brief period of time there before the leak. Fast forward to a couple of days ago where a random user on 4chan discovered that this app was mostly written by AI and it was written very poorly at that. And most importantly, every single bit of data, every single line of code for this entire app and ecosystem was stored on a storage bucket that was publicly accessible by anyone on the internet. that all you had to do was have the URL and you could have accessed the entire website and the entire app. And that's exactly what someone did because uh quite a few people rapidly ripped all of the content from this website and found just how big of a privacy nightmare this situation was. So what data was leaked from this app? Well, most of the interesting data that was leaked or not even really leaked, it was just online just there for people to see. Most of the interesting data was user registration data. And this is where things rapidly go downhill. You see, remember how I said that only women were allowed to have accounts? Well, how did the app verify that someone was a woman and not uh, you know, creating an account as a dude? Well, they had users choose one of two options. They could take a selfie of their face and upload it to their servers, or they could scan a copy of their driver's license and upload it to the company's servers. So, all of that data was leaked. And as if that was not bad enough, in 2025, it turns out that many people still do not understand that when they take a photo with their smartphone with their location data turned on, their smartphone will embed in the metadata of that photo their GPS location. And it turns out it's pretty precise most of the time. people have gotten a little bit too comfortable with uh places like social media like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever, whatever everyone's using nowadays because most social media websites will strip the XIF data from a photo that you upload. So if you wanted to post a photograph to Instagram, that user's phone is still reporting your GPS location to Instagram. It's just that Instagram is taking the extra step to remove that private data from your photo on your behalf before they post it to your account. Most people for some reason seem to not understand that this goes on. But when you're using a rather poorly coded app that was probably either written in Tel Aviv or Mumbai, they did not strip any of this data. So the raw photos that these people took to register an account to prove that they were indeed female and not male. All of that private data was still attached to the image. And it's even worse for people who took a photo of their driver's license because if they took a photo of their driver's license, that image itself would have a GPS location and their driver's license would have their mailing address. So then you could cross reference the address that was on the driver's license with the GPS coordinate and see if they matched. Right? So now we're starting to see why this may have been a a pretty big deal here. But we'll get back to that in a minute because the GPS stuff is pretty interesting. However, uh that was not the only thing that was leaked. As if it could not get any worse. It got worse because people noticed that not only were these uh photos of registrations online, but more or less the code for the app itself was online, which means that every single thing, every single user posted is now on the internet uh public. So if someone said a rumor about someone or tried to make some kind of unsubstantiated claim about a man that they knew, that information is now all over the internet. private messages, comments, posts, pretty much everything on this website is now just freely available on the internet. And my personal guess is that in a few days, if it doesn't exist already, is probably a database of all of the dudes that were slandered on this website is probably going to come out along with all of the people and their driver's licenses who uh slandered them. So, again, from a civil like social aspect, this is pretty bad. Uh, however, it could probably get quite worse because of what I'm about to mention in just a moment. But remember, all content on the app was leaked, including possibly potentially passwords. So, we all know how people tend to reuse passwords for things, including websites and uh apps they probably should not be using. So, this has a potential to get pretty bad, especially considering that the immediate fallout is for the company to basically just ghost everyone. Uh the T app itself uh has issued no warning or any kind of notification to any of the users that their data has their whole uh existence on the app has been breached. There has not been any acknowledgement from the company at all that any of this data was leaked. They're just carrying on and they're continuing to register new users. So I don't really know what's going on with this, but it does not appear to be that this scandal is over just yet because it's there's been no real effort to change anything. I don't even know if the owners of this app are are still around. they may have just dropped it and left. Uh to be honest, so so it's hard to say exactly what's going on. It looks like the company just kind of walked away. The the developers of this just kind of left it as we can imagine. That's probably a fairly high likelihood considering the very large lawsuits that are going to result from this. But that's still all a social thing. So, you know, this is it's interesting. It's kind of fascinating, but it's not really like why is it worth talking about? Well, I think it's worth talking about because the national security concerns. A lot of people uh signed up for this app from inside their offices on military bases, legislative buildings, uh government facilities, uh all around the United States. So, very sensitive sites in some cases. People were signing up for this app because they were bored and on their phone at work. And when people are bored and on their phone at work, they submit selfies and boom, there you go. Now you're geo tagged. I haven't seen how many, but a few people, I don't know how many, but at least a few people signed up for this app using a photograph of their military ID, which in case you didn't know, is a huge no no. Uh, that's not a something that's acceptable. But once again, this kind of still stays within the realm of just a really bad data leak, right? So, what I'm trying to get at here rather awkwardly is what makes this any different than any kind of unflattering data breach in the past, right? If we recall a few years ago, I'm not sure how many people remember this, but a few years ago, there was a scandal with the Ashley Madison company, which was, I guess, a company that was set up to be like a social media for people to have an affair online, and they would uh facilitate the infrastructure for doing that. So, of course, it was a very illicit app. A lot of people got very very upset that their credit card data got leaked. But if we recall that that data breach many years ago, what was leaked during that scandal? If if memory serves me correctly, it was things like credit card information, email addresses, and you know, uh, names and, you know, billing addresses and things like that. Not exactly selfies or GPS coordinates. And when that scandal occurred a few years ago, there wasn't really like a centralized like database for people to go in and search to see if anyone they knew had an account with that website. So, it was really hard to for people to kind of figure out who was, you know, implicated in this rather unflattering data breach, right? Eventually, a lot of people did kind of get implicated in this, but it was it stayed mostly on the dark web for a long time. It didn't immediately appear on Google Maps like this one did. And also I would posit that this particular data breach is worse for national security because of the nature of the app itself. The app itself was designed to share gossip, not necessarily to just have an illicit affair. Having an having your illicit affair being documented by a credit card data breach that reveals that you are on a website that you're not supposed to be on. That's bad enough, but what's worse than that in in my opinion at least? Well, the potential for blackmail in this case. So, let's get right down into the weeds of what I mean by this. Uh, mostly because I'm already down here in the weeds and I'm dragging you guys down here with me because it's uh pretty rough. So, the type of data on this website that was leaked is very interesting because well, for one, immediately everyone could very easily georreerence all of the selfies and the data that was on these websites and plot it on a map. And when you plot things on maps, things get pretty interesting, right? So, what you can do is you can take the GPS coordinates of all of the people that were implicated in this uh scandal and you can cross reference it with their mailing address and or their voting records. So, now you can verify as to whether or not a person was actually at the mailing address that they were supposed to be at. Remember the nature of this app? The nature of this app is to rate men like Yelp or like some kind of social credit system for men that they may be dating or affiliated with. So, if you will unfortunately follow along with me for just a moment, a woman has an affair outside of marriage and decides that she does not like the individual that she was having the affair with anymore and she decides to hop on this app, create an account, and share a lot of private details. This guy's a cheater, blah blah blah, so on and so forth, or any other kind of really bad, damaging information about this this person that they were having the affair with. Well, if they took their selfie photo from that guy's apartment because they got upset one time, well, you can see how that data is now on the internet for people to cross reference with their actual mailing address uh if they were so kind as to provide a scan of their driver's license. So, that's bad enough as is, but let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen. It gets a whole lot worse if this entire scandal took place located within the base housing of a military base. And it gets even worse than that. If these pens started popping up in the places where general officers are known to live, as in the more affluent parts of military bases around the country, if you know what I mean. And it can get worse, not in just the context of the military threats, but uh powerful people being potentially implicated in things like this. Because what you can do is take the GPS data from this data breach and overlay it on a map and overlay that with US census data for income for instance to find out just how many people living in very affluent areas are not very happy with the people around them. So as interesting as that is uh for potentially very uh wealthy and very powerful people having a lot of pins fall on their personal residences. Remember, again, I'm trying to look at things from a more practical national security angle. And I can tell you that if we're looking at a counter espionage effort, I am sure I am sure that a lot of people would be very very interested in this app's data. I can guarantee you that every single intelligence agency in the world is just having a field day with this already because you can look at the data and see the obvious espionage angle. users who are married to someone, but they had an account on this app uh secretly so their spouse couldn't see it. And because they took uh georreerenced photographs, uh you can now know that they worked on or near a military base. So you can narrow it down, you know, to even more specific uh threat vectors and things like that. These people are ripe targets for blackmail, espionage, leverage from an international spiring, you know, anything and everything. Uh, of course the the the vulnerabilities here are absolutely limitless. I am just only focusing on the the part of the spectrum that lies within the espionage realm because, you know, the the other stuff is is interesting, but I don't want to waste you guys' time by going into the social aspects of this. So, yeah, this is a pretty big scandal. I don't think anyone has realized how severe this is just yet because everyone's focusing on this from the social angle, right? You're talking about, all right, these women created an account on a on an app solely for the purposes of doxing and sharing the the PII of dudes that they know without their knowledge. Oh, look at that. Their own PII gets breached, right? So, the the comeuppance angle of this, you know, and the the tables being turned angle of all of this is what people are focusing on right now. I'm trying to not really get involved in all of that, right? I'm trying to look at things from like, okay, how bad is this? because this app was about gossip and about the social angle of things and you know all this gossipy stuff right people are less likely to take it seriously so for instance I don't even know if like say the army's C is looking into this to identify any general officers wives who were implicated in this uh to find out hey look now you're at risk for espionage so you know be on the lookout kind of thing I don't know if they're doing that I think that you know the internet is you know of course faster than any kind of you counter espionage agency can work of course but I don't know they may just ignore this because well they think that it's about gossip and they think that it's about this you know useless social thing and they don't they don't understand that this man this has some pretty serious national security implications here and I think that this data breach is a lot worse than say if just some sort of illicit or you know embarrassing app leak occurred because of the nature of what was going on on this app this app gained notoriety because of what was happening on it so what was happening on this app. Well, it gained notoriety because it was just a pure vindictive cesspool of rottness. And what I mean by that is a lot of times women would create a profile, like a fake bit of information about a guy that they were trying to date themselves, so that they would basically give him a one-star Yelp rating. This dude's horrible. Stay away from this guy. And then they secretly go try to date that guy. So, they would try to poison the well regarding individual people. And in many cases, the guy had no idea that this was going on. So, say you're in a Fortune 500 company and you really want to date your boss and your boss is dating somebody else. And so, you go on this app and you created a fake report about how all this guy's a horrible person. Here's a bunch of lies about him to ward off potential people from this person. If you're at a Fortune 500 company and that data gets leaked, well, there you go. You could have people getting fired because of the false rumors that are being perpetrated about them on this particular app. And again, looking at things from the national security angle, you could have things like security clearances being impacted by this because I don't know if anyone knows this or not, but a couple of years ago, the US government, when it comes to social media, requires you to give over your social media accounts when you apply for a security clearance. Do you see the problem here? The reason for this is because the US government, if they're going to give you a security clearance, would really appreciate knowing if you are engaging in behavior or posting content online that is very likely to get you in a situation where you could be blackmailed. People do not like to hear it, but I'll mention it now. This is also why people who were openly gay or people who were transgender were prevented in the past from getting security clearances because at the time during the height of the cold war the Soviet Union uh went after these people like a moth to flame because uh at the time it was socially unacceptable for people to be of that persuasion. So you know it would it would be damaging if someone you know came out of the closet or something like that and that was a security risk at the time. Now, you know, one can argue about that in modern society. But you see the the kind of general idea here. The US government from a national security angle, if they're going to give you a security clearance, they want to make sure that you're not engaging in behavior that is easil that's going to get you easily blackmailed by a foreign nation state, right? So, social considerations aside, I know that's a very touchy topic, but when it comes to national security, it's pretty clear. So, now you can start seeing how a man can have a security clearance and a social media profile that is not even his, and he's got a social media presence. Well, now that just got leaked to China and Russia, this is this is just a gigantic mess. And unfortunately, uh there's really probably going to be absolutely zero accountability for any of this. So, uh it really does highlight, especially when we get to what's going on in the UK, it really does highlight the data security concerns, but also the fact that there were 2 million users on this website. At least that's what they reported. I don't know if it was actually 2 million. When I took a look at some of this data, I only looked at 20,000 people. So, this is what the map looks like with 20,000. Can you imagine what 2 million looks like? You know, that's a lot. That's a pretty big number of people. And I just I just feel that because this is this people are going to look at this and they're going to think, "Ah, this is just about a gossip thing. Some kind of internet weird 4chan thing. Not worth not worth looking at." No, I'm telling you, look at it. Like, look into this, you know, and I don't think the agencies are going to do it. There's a lot of threat vectors out there now. And like I wrote in the wire, in two or three days when this whole thing gets forgotten about and everybody kind of moves on and there's some other new horrific thing in the news cycle, people are going to forget about this. But you know who doesn't forget about this? The national intelligence agencies of pretty much every country on Earth who are going to look to exploit this. So just when this exits the news cycle is my bet is when when a lot of this data is going to be exploited and a lot of uh a lot a lot of espionage potential is increased. So sorry for spending so much time talking about this one today. I didn't want to talk about it at all. But when I started looking at it through the lens of national security, I started realizing, oh dear, this is a very big deal. And most importantly, it's worth spending so much time on because it's not just a data breach. It's a data breach that falls right there in that sweet spot where people are not going to care about it. So that's why I think it's worth uh focusing on for a while. And I think it's going to be very interesting to see what information comes from the uh data that was leaked, especially when it comes to what people were saying about uh people on the app. For instance, I saw I haven't verified it for myself, but I found uh claims that uh one user was identified as being an HR manager at a very large company and was actually posting uh negative uh social credit reviews about all of the men that she had interviewed uh for particular jobs and exactly why she had fired them or uh not fired them but refused to hire them. So, you know, you see how this is a kind of a big deal uh when it comes to everything from national security to the economy to the workplace. And oh man, it is just a nightmare that I really really really wish uh I didn't have to care about so much. But anyway, let's let's get off of that and let's talk about something equally concerning, which is our friends across the pond. Our friends in the United Kingdom have had a rather rough week because the online safety act uh went into effect a couple of days ago and the average British person discovered exactly what that law was all about when they tried to visit any website in the United Kingdom. So the online safety act was a rather controversial uh piece of legislation that was pushed through uh the British government and essentially it was originally advertised as a way of preventing youth from accessing adult content. It turns out that this law uh also applies to pretty much any website that hosts content. And the impact of this law, which is dripping with irony, is that pretty much every website in the United Kingdom is now required to make users submit a selfie and or a photograph of their stateisssued government identification. So maybe we can see where this is a little bit of a problem here. Of course, most websites have just shut down services to the UK. And of course, VPN companies have made probably in the sums of hundreds of millions of dollars overnight uh just from new users from the UK so that British people can get around their own firewall for their own country. So I guess we're just going to have to see what comes of it. A lot of British people have noted on social media that immediately this law was used to censor footage of protests at migrant centers uh and uh to to make sure that people can't know about protests that are occurring in their own country. So yeah, this is about as dystopian as it possibly gets. But again, it's it's Europe, so I don't really know in the context of how bad censorship already was. I don't know how bad it's going to get because of this. It'll get worse, but how worse? I don't know. We We're just gonna have to see, I guess. But anyway, I wish our friends across the pond good luck uh in working through that one. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Uh before we roll up with the intercepted ghost net reports, I did want to mention that I am aware of the large-scale war that is rapidly getting underway in uh Cambodia and Thailand. I'm going to have to get some more information on that. I've not built a map yet, and I have not started plotting all of the information on it. However, this has uh become a much larger thing than just a border clash. This is a legitimate war between Cambodia and Thailand. Again, something that not a lot of people tend to care about so much. However, the Thai Navy is now involved. So, this is becoming more of a regional thing and not just a border clash. So, please give me some time to do a little bit more research and uh I'll hopefully on Monday have the ability to get a little bit more fidelity on what's going on there because I'm no expert in South uh Southeast Asia. I have a very primitive knowledge of of the region. So, uh I'm going to have to get up to speed over the weekend here and we'll have to see how the how this goes. But, uh more information to come on that on Monday. But, as far as ghost net reports for this week, it was a good net this week. A lot of people exchanging information. A lot of good uh a lot of good details uh were shared. The Starlink outage occurred shortly before the ghost net uh window. So, I had my radio up and running and a lot of people were sending messages about the Starlink outage, which is fantastic. I think that's you know one of the main reasons for HF radio so that so that users can get you know news from around the country and exchange information around the country when there's like a in in the case of Starlink a global outage. Uh so that was quite handy a very good use for that sort of thing but yeah it's uh coming along very well. Uh it's working fantastically and uh I hope to have some ways of clarifying things and smoothing out the the Ghostn net guide uh here in just a bit but more to come on that later. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Here are the sources as usual. Thank you guys all for sticking with me through this rather unfortunate uh news week and hopefully next week we can get some more fidelity on exactly what's going on in places like Southeast Asia as well as uh the latest developments for the Epstein scandal, which I uh forgot to make a slide on. But anyway, uh things keep changing by the minute with regards to the Epstein scandal in Washington DC. And uh I guess we're just going to have to wait for things to settle down a little bit before we figure out exactly what's going on because things are flip-flopping way too quickly uh for anyone to really make any kind of risk assessment based off of that information. So hopefully by Monday we'll have some more uh fidelity on what's going on and we'll just kind of work it then. So uh thank you guys all for sticking with me. Thank you for all of your support and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello, good everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for February 15th through the 21st of 2026. I know that many situation monitors out there may have situation monitoring fatigue, but the situation is not going to monitor itself. This week we seem to be at a pucker factor of about 9.5 as we await the kickoff of what is expected to be a very large bombing campaign in the Middle East. Other than that, we've had quite a few developments in many different areas this week, so let's get right to it. While the focus this week has largely been centered in the Middle East, there have been a few major developments brewing around the world. Over in the United Kingdom, former Prince Andrew was arrested on charges stemming from the release of the Epstein files. So far, he has only been charged with misconduct while holding public office, specifically for disclosing sensitive information to Epstein, which helped in securing financial deals. Andrew has not been arrested for participating in Epstein's human trafficking network. So far, this is just a corruption case, but time will tell how it all works out. Around the continent, civil unrest remains fairly constant in a few nations, most notably France this week. Following Antifa beating a man to death in the street last week, various uprising movements have not only formed, but started to take the fight to Antifa. Right now, much of this is taking the form of meeting Antifa's thuggery with even more thuggery, but there are efforts underway to organize against far-left groups throughout France, specifically with regards to many people being fed up with immigration. French politics are always a challenge to describe, but suffice to say that there are many upset people around the continent, and France is often the canary in the coal mine for how close Western civilization is to a much wider societal conflagration. Here at home, domestic strife continues to build as far-left activist groups remain active in many areas. Even though Minneapolis is out of the news cycle at this point, the unrest still continues, or technically not unrest so much as insurgent tactics. Defend 612 and ICE Watch continue to harass and detain average people as the insurgents use their license plate databases to track ICE vehicles. Since many of these vehicles are rental cars, random citizens who rent the vehicles after eyes are being harassed, pulled over, and it's generally targeted by idiots who just want to cause chaos. A few weeks ago, opinions differed quite widely on the logic and mentality of the withdrawal of ICE in Minneapolis. Some people argued that this was a total capitulation by the Trump administration, and others said this was more of a complicated restructuring of forces. But at this point, the facts of the case are undeniable. None of the insurgent groups harassing and targeting citizens such as Defend 612 and Eyes Watch have been shut down or prosecuted in any way. None of the leadership or funding sources of these groups has been impacted in any way. The Minneapolis Police Department is not enforcing the law in your city to protect citizens from these groups, and insurgent groups continue to operate with total and complete freedom of maneuver throughout the city without any sort of opposition at all from authorities. This reality is not just present in Minneapolis, but most other major cities as well. And due to the child protesters becoming a major problem around the country, these groups are only continuing to expand their membership. These teacher-organized protests have been popping up all around the country for years, but really have come to a head over the past month as students conduct walkouts, in many cases quite literally into busy roadways. Students are being hit by cars on a nearly daily basis around the country because they're running out into the streets during these walkout protests. These protests have been far too numerous for me to list each of them on the slide. Just know that there are several hundred protests at high schools and middle schools around the country each week. Elementary schools are also affected, though these obviously tend to be more organized and led by teachers for ideological reasons, with elementary school children not really being as violent themselves as the high school walkouts have been, which usually involve the throwing of rocks at passing vehicles. Other than the concerns with student activism efforts, there have been several terrorism incidents that have taken place over the past few weeks. I don't have hardly any solid details on any of these, to be honest, as the sourcing for what happened in most of of cases is not exactly reliable. First up, we had a vehicle ramming attack that was conducted at the Mead Substation in Nevada the other night, which involved the self-inflicted death of the assailant, who has been identified as Dawson Maloney, a resident of New York who was reported missing by his family after he became mentally unstable a few days ago. Beyond these basic details, nothing is certain regarding this case, and the exact site that was attacked has not even been confirmed yet, probably for security reasons. Until I have a better grid coordinate for this attack, I'm plotting it at the Mead Substation, which is a major electrical substation for most of the region, and it's the only potential target that matches the description provided by authorities. So, for most of the details on this one, we're just going to have to wait and see. Similar story in Meridian, where the suspect in the St. Luke's vehicle ramming attack in Meridian is still on the run. No further details have been provided on this, uh, except for the fact that the suspect was wearing a black T-shirt, tan pants, and a surgical mask at the time of the attack. No surveillance footage has been provided yet, though, so we'll have to wait and see until more details come out. Around the country more generally, very strange and suspect incidents have occurred over the past couple of weeks, as one should expect during a time of increased international tension. Flashbangs being thrown at polling places in North Carolina, the mysterious murders of scientists, and random catastrophic internet outages with no explanation provided have been a mainstay over the past few days and weeks, and though none of these incidents appear to be related to one another, times of increased tension always seem to result in a lot of shadow warfare type games being played, which sometimes spill over into the media headlines. So, all in all, a very busy week around the United States, which is probably going to get even more kinetic once things pop off in the Middle East. Overseas, there is one item of note that I have been focusing on for a couple of weeks now, which I would like to get as many eyes on as possible. This is the case of the detention of two American pilots in Guinea, which have been sitting in a very horrific African prison for almost 2 months now. Fabio Espinal Nuñez and Brad Schlenker were originally arrested after making a fuel stop in Guinea while piloting a charter flight from Suriname to Dubai. They requested permission to land for fuel at Conakry Airport and were granted permission to land. Upon arrival, they were arrested and immediately thrown in prison on unclear national security charges. So far, that's pretty much the entire story that can be verified with some degree of accuracy. The circumstances of what led up to the arrest are unknown. Nothing is known about the Brazilian family that chartered the flight and was on board at the time of the arrest. Who they are and whether or not they were also arrested is unknown. We also don't really know what the State Department has been doing behind the scenes other than that the pilots have been visited a few times by State Department officials. Officially, the State Department has not publicly acknowledged this case at all. The exact charges that have been filed on the pilots is also not known because in a third world country down near the bottom of the global poverty list, things aren't often as professional as they are in the Western world. The law firm that is negotiating for the pilots has stated that an appeals court did authorize the release pilots on bail, but the military rolled in and forced the court to keep them in jail. This small detail, while strictly hearsay at the moment, is the reason for focusing on this. This is probably why the State Department is dragging their feet on this as well because they don't want to strong-arm a warlord or pay the required bribes to let these guys go. The Guineans originally tried to bag them on drug charges, but they didn't find any drugs or weapons on the plane, so they slapped the general national security charges on them for now while negotiations are ongoing. For additional context, the day before these guys landed, the warlord who had been running the country after seizing power years ago formally decided to attempt to make his dictatorship seem a little bit more legitimate. So he held an election where he won 90% of the vote exactly one day before they landed. So to me, this seems like a classic shakedown move. Dictator solidifies and consolidates his power and snatches a couple of Americans to attempt to get some attention from the United States. And the State Department has not been able to secure their release in a timely manner, so the families of these pilots have gone to the media to attempt to get some eyes on this. I am personally interested in this case because nobody deserves to rot in an African prison, and sometimes a small African nation needs to be taught the lesson of why you don't mess with Americans. And even if the State Department won't move with a purpose on this, other means will be used to secure the pilot's safety. Of course, the best possible solution to this crisis would be for the pilots to quietly be released and walk out on their own. But considering the context of a warlord looking to make a name for himself right now, this is probably a much more challenging diplomatic problem to solve than one might think. So, I will continue working this case, and I would say that I will provide updates as they come. However, I also don't want to derail any potential diplomatic solution that may be in the works. But you all know how it goes. 90% of the work in the intel world never gets published because a situation that was being planned for never ended up happening. But the work is still helpful just in case things go sideways any more active approach is needed at some point. So, hopefully this coming week we can at least get the State Department to acknowledge and confirm some details of the case, and we can have something more solid to work from. The United States has a long history of abandoning their citizens overseas, so this would be a good chance for the White House to get a really good PR victory, which they seem to desperately need right now. So, I'm hoping that we can get these guys out of that prison sooner rather than later. Moving to the Middle East, the United States marches ever closer to a large-scale combat operation or LISKO, otherwise known as war. Just right up front, I personally think that we've passed the threshold for this potentially being a giant bluff. Now, one might be tempted to CYA and say that this is a SIOP, but if it is, it sure fooled me because I think that there are way too many resources in theater for this to be a giant bluff, and I think that honestly, if the White House backs down now, then the Iranians are going to take that as a victory, and they can say, "Ah, we faced down the Americans, and the Americans blinked first, right?" A lot of egos are driving things for better or for worse, and the Iranians are making a lot of critical mistakes right now on the diplomatic stage. So, my guess is in the next few days we're going to be dropping bombs in that country once again. Of course, until something happens, it's all speculation, right? But even still, this potential conflict looks vastly different from the previous targeting effort of Operation Midnight Hammer. That operation was what we call a deliberate targeting operation, which involved a single sortie of B-2s, which bombed a few nuclear research facilities and storage sites throughout Iran. Most notably, the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility as well as research and production facilities at Fordow. Last time, this was a one-and-done strike, but the exceptionally fast build-up that we've seen over the past few days is a whole other animal. During Midnight Hammer, there were not nearly as many resources deployed to support those strikes beyond the forces that were brought into theater just in case the operation went sideways. This time, however, a massive percentage of the US Air Force has forward deployed to the Middle East. Similarly, more naval forces are maneuvering into position as well to supplement the two carrier strike groups which have been deployed for this operation. Just because I know everyone's going to ask, concerning ground forces, there really isn't any ground combat elements slated for this operation just yet. Again, with the exception of the forces which would be needed to go in for more specific tasks, rescue missions, or other special activities. There has been a lot of talk about potential boots on ground involvement, but right now I'm just not seeing any of that happening. The deployment of troops would be the phase of the operation that would take the most time. It would be the most visible and logistically challenging way of of doing it anyway, and right now there just hasn't been much movement on that front. And considering the speed at which they are moving aircraft and logistics, it certainly looks like the Pentagon is leaning mostly on the air war side of things for this conflict. However, one of the bigger dangers with shrugging this whole thing off as just another case of we're going to drop a lot of bombs and go home is that the elephant in the room has not been addressed. And that elephant is almost certain to cause cascading efforts that will spill out of the region itself. This whole show is really the Israelis' affair, and American involvement is mostly just centered around what they want us to do. In practical terms of how a military operation might be undertaken, this does matter. In other words, if we don't bomb the Iranians to the Israelis' satisfaction, they will handle it themselves, and the world might not take too kindly to the Israelis handling things themselves because they have been wanting to operationally use very special tools in Iran for years. And as far as scuttlebutt goes, enough old spooks have talked about it over the past few months that it's probably safe to discuss at this point, but some general rumors were flying last year when the first round of strikes were being planned, which is the quiet reason as to why I myself was so invested in monitoring that situation. Again, this is all conjecture that can't be confirmed whatsoever, so just take this with a giant grain of salt, but it may help you understand why we're doing this the way we're doing it, and why we're doing it right now. Last year, word got out at the time that Operation Midnight Hammer was actually conducted because the Israelis threatened to detonate a nuclear device at Natanz, and thus eliminate the problem of a lot of bunkers underneath the very large mountain. Trump signed off on a single sortie of B-2s because he was kind of backed into a corner with the potential operational use of a nuclear warhead in modern war, and they probably had him in other ways as well. And since no other nation on Earth would shed any tears for the Iranians being bombed, the Pentagon went ahead with the operation so as to get Netanyahu off his back, and hopefully satisfy the Israelis for some time. Turns out the strikes weren't as effective as first thought, which gave the Israelis even more evidence to argue for the use of nuclear weapons at specifically at the Fordow, Parchin, and Natanz facilities. If the United States can't get the job done with the biggest and baddest conventional bombs ever made, then it's not out of the question for the Israelis to want to use their unconventional weapons. So, again, all rumor, but it's a rumor that is basically the baseline assumption for American military policy in the Middle East these days. As in, this isn't just what people are screeching about in some online schizo forum post, this is what very serious people in the world are are considering right now. Fast forward to today, the end of February 2026, and we're back on the Ayatollah's doorstep once again, but with very different weapons this time. You don't use F-15s, F-16s, F-22s, F-18s, and F- 35s to strike bunker facilities. I mean, you can, but most of the time you're going to be using these aircraft to neutralize an enemy's air force and strike other more conventional targets that are above ground. Also, a lot of these resources are probably allocated for the defense of Israeli airspace, because if we recall during Midnight Hammer, the Israelis actually did get hammered pretty hard themselves, simply due to the saturation of Iranian missiles that were actually able to make it through their air defenses. Turns out the US Navy was able to shoot down a lot of those missiles, but not all of them. So, they probably don't want to chance it this time around, and the US Air Force is happy to oblige and defend Israeli airspace. So, now we find ourselves again, even without anything happening yet so far, we now find ourselves examining how quickly all of this has changed, which is probably the biggest indicator that something, whatever it is, something has the president and the whole national command authority very concerned. Personally, I think it's due to time constraints. I think the Israelis have gotten completely impatient, and they're not willing to wait any longer, so the United States does not have the time to slowly build up forces in the Middle East over a period of like 4 months like they did in Venezuela, right? They're acting with a lot of speed here, and it seems like there's a time constraint behind a lot of this. And it may be time to the Israelis just losing patience, honestly. That's probably it. I mean, we've seen the very strong shift away from any kind of real like justification for going to war in the Middle East again. First, it was the Iranian nuclear program, and now it's just straight up regime change without any, you know, real pretense for justifying it. For example, this morning the US Embassy in Baghdad posted a propaganda poster that basically just throws off the pretense that this is about the Iranian missile or nuclear program. This is about regime change because the Israelis don't like a regional power existing that they don't have complete and total control over, much less one in their own backyard, which is fair enough from their perspective, but for the rest of us it's a little concerning that one, we have to be involved at all, and two, if we don't do what they say hard enough for a couple of seconds at least, we'll be able to read a newspaper at midnight all the way over in Baghdad. So, overall the strategic vision here is not really clear and because of that it's hard to say what they're going to strike. It would make sense to strike the nuclear facilities that they struck before because they rebuilt a lot of those. It would also make sense to strike a lot of the facilities that they have been observed to be fortifying over the past few weeks. That would make a lot of sense as well. That's probably what they're going to do, but again also the wild card is what the Israelis are doing and how much patience they have left. We might see a bright star emerge over the Parchin facility or we might not. I don't know. I know that it might be a little bit concerning to just kind of casually mention that the Israelis might actually nuke a few places in Iran this time around. I try not to dwell on it too much because well, for one it's, you know, it's really just conjecture, but also it's something that can be very easily sensationalized if you don't understand the wider context of how serious things are. So, I would really prefer to focus on the more practical side of things. And in that case, there are a lot of ifs. If the United States conducts very bare minimum strikes on a few airfields and the Iranians respond in kind with a few dozen missile launches on American bases and Israeli territory, then we'll probably be all right, all things considered. If that's the case, then it'll probably be more like Operation Midnight Hammer 2, just a lot bigger scale and the Iranians might hit back a little harder, but other than that, daily life won't change much here at home. However, if the United States carries out what is planned and the Israelis aren't satisfied with that operation, they might just kick a hornet's nest that ignites a more regional conflict. And honestly, this is the most serious if that the events of the past year or so have made me think might actually be closer to reality than anyone is really comfortable with. If the Israelis think that they can get away with it, they will absolutely detonate a nuclear warhead at Natanz and blame the Iranians for it. Again, this is the most dangerous COA, not the most likely. It's the most dangerous. And hopefully, we can avoid all that, but these are the big ifs that, you know, I myself have on the big board to kind of plan for. It doesn't really take a genius to understand that anytime something happens in the Middle East with that word nuclear, there's going to be a lot of people hopping all over social media trying to sell you a Nord VPN subscription and some freeze-dried food that tastes like garbage. So, just be aware that this is going to be very sensational. It probably already is sensationalized in the media, but just be advised, this is one of those things that people tend to latch on to because, well, I mean, it's kind of a big deal. For us here at home and thus outside the potential blast zone, we're definitely in a period of time where situational awareness is paramount. Scientists are getting murdered, vehicles are ramming into substations, random polling places are being targeted. Sketchy stuff is a foot all around the country at this point. So, for the next couple of weeks, standard preparedness practices apply and I myself am keeping my head on a swivel due to the potential for things overseas to affect the homeland. There is no need to freak out or anything, but just be aware that things might start happening rather quickly when and if this conflict pops off. Just like last time, but probably a little bit more serious this time around. I myself think it's a great opportunity to recheck last-minute preps and make sure everything still works. Top off the gas tank, PMCS, change the batteries in your optics, all kinds of stuff like that, right? Since my wheelhouse tends to be in the realm of information, that's usually what I'm personally focused on making sure that I can manage even when everything is going sideways. One of the ways that we can do this, one of the tools in the toolbox, is radio. How about that for a segue? The Ghost Net was organized for expressly this purpose, being able to exchange information of a strategic nature even when things like internet services are down. It's always rather interesting to note that right before the US is about to do something big in the Middle East, online platforms are dropping like flies. Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare inevitably go down for a period of time and annoy everybody. Thus, the importance of having at least something prepared that we can lean on to exchange information in case things get spicy. But more specifically, with a potential war in the Middle East, this tool fits the job because it's not really just a prepping ham radio network for localized radio comms. This whole project is intended to be able to relay messages around the world without the internet at all. Resiliency when everything is collapsing and nothing works is not an easy feat to achieve, but over the years, I think we've got a lot more prepared than we used to be and we can now transition semi-seamlessly into a state of chaos and still keep a lot of capabilities at the same time. On a more practical standpoint, I do have all of the mapping data that you have seen here today available as KMZ files for loading into A-Tac if you want. For the more professional situation monitors, I also have a lot of content on ArcGIS if you just want to stream it uh through a web browser or something like that, you can certainly do that if you want. And I've uh set up the dashboard to be more Iran-centric over the next few days, so just a little tool if you've got like a spare monitor or something, it's kind of cool to have up in the background. But for those who just want the raw data, I update these KMZs pretty much every day and I will have something that is a lot easier to use on this front very soon. Fun fact, for anyone who wants the same maps and the raw data that I often use in the wire reports, this is what I'm using to brief off of most of the time. A lot of you have asked about what and what maps I'm using. I'm using A-TAC. If you were to download A-TAC and load in my KMZs, you'll have pretty much the same base level data that I have. And though you can't see it during a wire report, every single one of these points has metadata. So, you can actually see what the point is. You don't have to just rely on the symbology because I know the, you know, military standard 2525 symbology is not really a common thing. So, if you load in the actual data itself, or if you go to my ArcGIS maps and just click on one of the icons, you can actually see what it is. And in most cases, there's a brief description, a title, and probably a link for you to click as well, so that you can get the primary source material for why that point is at that location. For some of my layers, I can't actually do that due to copyright reasons. And a lot of law firms really don't want me mapping the locations in the United States which are helping to aid and abet illegal immigration. So, I've had to kind of tone that one down a little bit while I'm trying to figure out a better way of doing that. But anyway, for all the data that I have showed you, it's all there for you if you want it. So, anyone who's interested can download my KMZs from my GitHub page. Pretty much everything that I post to ArcGIS, I also upload as a raw KMZ. Anyone who's interested can download my KMZs from my GitHub page and have a few different data layers just to have on hand just in case it helps. Anybody who uses A-TAC might struggle to realize, "Oh, what is this app used for?" Well, download my KMZs, load them in, and you'll see it. It does really help. And for those of you on Patreon who are helping me test out some things, you don't need to do anything special. Just follow the instructions in my guide and my real-time data and the KMZs will all load into A-TAC automatically. But more to come on that later. For everybody else, all of my research in text format can be found on my Obsidian page sorted by each day's wire reports. Information and geospatial data is just one tool in the toolbox among many others, and I'm working on improving the access to real-time information as best I can over the coming weeks. Because that's the whole point of a lot of this work, isn't it? To be able to have enough information to make decisions when seconds count instead of just doom-scrolling social media all day and reacting to the outrage of the week. Over the next few weeks, we'll do what we can to improve on being more proactive and hopefully keep improving the baseline of staying far ahead of the curve, no matter what happens. So, let's get after it and turn the information around us into a productive tool and and not just something to react to after the fact. It's not easy, but I think we can do it, and we can always do better. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you again to all of you for sticking around. I really do appreciate all of your support, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for October 5th through the 11th of 2025. The insanity continues again this week, so let's get right to it. Starting off here in the home front, the general state of unrest in many locations continues as before with regards to counter ice operations, most of which is focused in Portland and Chicago as usual, but we'll get more into that in a bit. Also in the United States, mostly in the western regions of the country, the digital surveillance of Christian churches continues at the behest of one particular foreign nation. And also this week there have been several developments with regards to disarmament campaigns. Most notably yesterday California signed into law AB 1127, which is a de facto ban on all Glocks. So, in typical fashion, there will probably be more outrage after the bill has passed rather than the lead up to it being passed and signed into law, but this bill bans any semi-automatic pistol which can accept a Glock switch or something similar to that effect, right? It's not just Glocks, but it's any other pistol that can take some sort of similar device. We all know how this goes, so I'm not going to harp on it too much, but rest assured I would be willing to bet that many other states are going to probably follow in the footsteps of California by figuring out a way of of banning firearms, not because the firearms themselves are illegal, but because they could be made into something that may be illegal. Of course, the majority of Glock switches are not actually used by proper lawful owners, they're used by gang members, and nobody ever really seems to be interested in policing that kind of activity, but we all know why that is. So, but that's the situation in the homeland for this week. And around the world, things have been a happenin' this week. We of course have the peace agreement in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, which has gone into effect and seems to be holding as much as to be expected. Either way, the general rough approximate guidelines of the peace deal that have been agreed to by both sides have been undertaken. There has been a very sharp decline in hostilities between the two main belligerents here in this conflict, so that is a positive development. But once again, we will see if this sort of thing holds for any length of time. As one can probably guess by the way that I'm describing this, I do not have any faith at all that this ceasefire will hold for any length of time. The old rule of thumb is that there's no such thing as a peace agreement in the Middle East. It's just how long is the ceasefire going to last before the war kicks up again. I don't know how long it's going to last this time, but my guess is that this will not end, especially because Gaza still remains, right? That's that was a major strategic goal for Israel is to completely take over the entirety of Gaza and basically just make it not exist anymore as a region and just kind of absorb it into Israeli control and push the Palestinians somewhere else, right? That was a major strategic goal for them as a nation, and internal Israeli politics indicate that a lot of politicians in Israel are not happy that Netanyahu agreed to this peace deal. So, he is facing a lot of internal criticism because he is letting Gaza remain, at least for now. We shall see, but enough on that for now. Moving over to the Far East, that particular conflict has reignited in the form of both China and the United States engaging in a little bit of economic warfare on their own. Things have been rather tepid over the past couple of weeks with regards to China and the United States negotiating their trade deals. Things were looking up there for quite a while, and then China decided to, as of November 1st, implement a whole lot of export controls on things that the United States needs quite dearly, such as rare earth minerals like lithium and a few other things as well. So, that of course angered Washington quite a bit as you could probably expect. So, the White House came out with a 100% tariff on China to take effect on the same day. And the the meeting between the United States and China, there was supposed to be an in-face meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping to take place soon, that meeting may or may not happen. That's really uncertain as to whether or not it's going to go forward. So, things are not really looking super great for the United States and China, but once again, this is economics in 2025, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. So, in 2 weeks we may find out that things are doing swimmingly well and then all of this kind of goes away. Who knows? The books are being cooked to an absurd degree, so I don't know if anybody can ever really say what a country's national economic situation is at any given time, but suffice it to say that the economy kind of tanked a little bit upon the news that the White House was going to retaliate with the these tariffs once again. There were quite a few mysterious shorts on Bitcoin immediately before the White House announcement on the tariffs. So, there are already a lot of indicators of deception and insider trading and a general state of shenanigans being undertaken with this sort of thing. So, I don't know. We'll see how it works out, but that's the situation as it stands right now. Moving down south to talk about the strategic movement and the general state of the situation with regards to Venezuela, rest assured war with Venezuela is still on the menu, and the US Navy has quietly sent a couple of more destroyers down there to augment the naval forces that are still conducting lots of exercises, training, and a general preparation for war right off the coast of Venezuela. I don't think there was a strike on a narco boat this week, so we've gone a full 7 days without blowing up a cartel vessel, but the general situation still remains as before. The United States has not reduced any presence down off the coast of Venezuela. As a matter of fact, we've increased it quite a bit. So, depending on what the United States is trying to do, depending on the strategic goals, and what the US is looking to gain from any kind of action in Venezuela, we shall see. It may just be trying to strong-arm Maduro into something that the United States wants, which is obviously that's I mean that's obviously the low-hanging fruit of what's going on, but there are ways to strong-arm Maduro that don't involve actually conducting combat operations in his country. The question is whether or not the White House will decide if sending troops into Venezuela is going to be necessary for these strategic goals that we seek in Venezuela, whatever those are. Probably oil, but who knows? Either way, there's a lot of movement going on and certainly a lot to keep an eye on as we move forward. Moving back to the homeland, there have been a few kinetic events that have taken place this week. We'll talk about Portland and Chicago in in just a moment, or rather at the end, because there have been a quite a few questions as to what the overall strategic goal in these places are, and I think I can maybe clarify some things. But when it comes to actual kinetic events this week, there have been two major events. The first of which was the DC church bomber outside St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C. That was a very interesting case because even though IED attacks and just generally crazy people with explosives tends to be kind of an American tradition at this point, this case was hosted to quite a bit of information manipulation, and I think that more eyes should be on this case considering the current threats against churches around the United States. I also wanted to mention the industrial explosion that took place in Tennessee yesterday. I didn't have time to slip it into the wire, but this was a very very kinetic explosion that took place in Tennessee at a major facility that produces explosives for the military. So, there have been many many casualties from this incident, and we'll get more into that in just a second. But the church bomber up first, one Lewis Jerry was arrested in Washington, D.C. after he caused a bit of a scene outside St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C. last Sunday. It took a couple of days for the details of this case to come to light because it was initially downplayed quite heavily by the authorities and by local journalists who don't really don't really care to highlight any kind of threats against Christian churches. Initially, this was reported as just some crazy guy setting up a camping tent right on the front of the church steps here as you can see. This is why there wasn't that much focus on this kind of thing because it just looked like a crazy homeless guy who was trying to cause a scene. This happens in D.C. like every 15 minutes, okay? So, this is not really out of the realm of of normalcy for the area. Even with the, you know, deployment of troops to D.C., there's still a a lot of dystopian elements to the city, and this is one of those things that tends to kind of happen, right? So, the church noticed, or rather local authorities, I'm not sure if the church noticed first or if local authorities, who were kind of policing the area in advance, saw this guy first. Either way, he had set up his little encampment here on the front steps of the church around 6:00 in the morning before the Red Mass for the year. So again, a special mass dedicated to the Supreme Court justices at this particular church. The Red Mass is held more widely, of course, and is supposed to be a special day to pray for all of those who are involved in the criminal justice field and the the court system and things like that. But this particular church hosts the their Red Mass for the Supreme Court justices, and over the years a couple of justices have shown up to attend this mass, which takes place the the Sunday before the court calendar begins for the year. So, DC police, DC Metro Police, initially stated that all right, they made contact with the crazy guy trying to set up a homeless camp on the steps of the church. Obviously, can't do that sort of thing, so they were trying to, you know, get him up and relocate him to another area, and they found a Molotov on him. That's the initial story they told to the media. However, that's not what happened at all. This guy set up an encampment on the front steps of the church, and when he was first contacted by police who were trying to, you know, walk up to him and ask him what it what what he's doing, he said basically stay away from me, I've got explosives. I'll throw one at you if you come any closer kind of thing. So, this was already like a hostage situation, right right up front, right to start with. Turns out what he wanted police to do was read his nine-page manifesto of what seems to be mostly just insanity, which is what they did, and he they were able to get him to surrender and arrest him and move on from there. But the bomb squad showed up because of the IED threat, obviously, and they found 200 IEDs scattered throughout his possessions and inside his tent and backpacks and stuff like that. So, I have no idea what these IEDs looked like, but looking at this guy and the context of this and the alleged contents of his manifesto, I'm going to venture a wild guess that these 200 IEDs were probably Antifa specials, right? Little tiny um fireworks grade explosives which have shrapnel probably glued or taped to the outside of them. We see these a lot. So, they're still explosives. They're still lethal. They're still like a very dangerous terroristic threat, but it's not like this guy had 200 155 shells with pressure plates in his tent here, right? So, these 200 IEDs are probably very Antifa grade, meaning that they're very very small, but you know, they're still very dangerous. They're still like, you know, it's still a terrorist attack, right? And considering that the White House has really tried to sign a bunch of executive orders talking about domestic terrorism and things like that, here is your case. This is exactly the type of guy that you said from the White House that you were trying to target and there's been no comment on whether or not this guy's going to face federal terrorism charges. So, something to be aware of. We know this is not surprising in the slightest, but I did want to highlight it because there hasn't really been very much detail on the nuances of this case and I did want to highlight that. Now, moving down to Tennessee, the very unfortunate explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems Explosives Factory in Bucks North. This was a major manufacturer for military grade explosives. You can see here from their website, these are all of the things that they manufactured at this facility, and you can see it's a lot of very very heavy heavy military explosives here. And as you can see by the helicopter footage of the blast, the place is gone. It's it was just a catastrophic detonation that occurred there. Whatever the cause was, we may never know as a matter of fact because there's just there's nothing but a crater left. As far as casualties go, officially 19 people are still missing, but looking at the before and after photos blast, I think we can be fairly confident these are all are all going to be fatalities, unfortunately. Once again, there is no indication of what took place here. There's no indication of well, you know, what what happened to cause this catastrophic explosion. This facility does have a history of safety violations, but that's not entirely abnormal for most industrial facilities these days. I mean, pretty much every explosives manufacturer has a history of safety violations at this point. So, I don't know if that's something that would factor into trying to establish causation. I don't know how normal that sort of thing would be at this type of facility. And I also don't know the nature of the safety violations because, again, they're making explosives for the military. It's not like they're really forthcoming with their information on on what exactly they do there and the exact nature of safety violations. This is definitely one of those national security things, so we're probably not going to get the truth as to what caused this catastrophic blast, but yeah, not not a great thing, for sure. And it does highlight every time one of these things happens, it does highlight the importance of being aware, paying attention, and each one of us doing what we can to make sure that we are as safe as possible, especially those who work in the industrial field. It's a very dangerous world out there just in general, and it would be a very good idea to try to make the world a little bit less dangerous, however you can do that. If that means being a little bit safer, being the OSHA stickler, you know, I know nobody likes to be that guy, right? Nobody likes to be that guy on the work site, but look, man, if your work site has the potential to turn into a crater, please consider being a stickler for safety and doing what you can to make sure that everybody goes home at the end of the day. Now, moving out west, something quite concerning that I wanted to mention again. I wrote a longer wire than normal on this topic, which of course is going to get a lot of pushback due to the nature of the nation involved with this, but I did want to mention once again that there is a targeted geofencing campaign underway at many mega churches in the western United States. So, for those of you who did not read the the wire report on this, there has been a major push by the government of Israel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, to increase their image and increase their presence in American Christian churches. So, the Israeli government is trying to teach you about Christianity and how Christian churches need to support the government of Israel, specifically with regards to the October 7th attacks. Again, this is literally the most forbidden topic I have found so far to discuss, so, you know, there's really not much I can say, honestly, about it, but I do want to highlight the geofencing concerns because that's kind of a security thing. You guys can look into the media blitz on your own, but the the geofencing thing is something that's interesting because it's the first time that this sort of thing has happened specifically by a foreign nation-state in the context of targeting a place solely for the Christian faith. Just to get the disclaimer out, of course, targeted geofencing for advertising purposes happens literally all the time. As you're watching this on your phone, you are probably being surveilled by at least Google, who is associating your advertising ID with this particular content if you're watching it on, say, YouTube for example. And geofencing for advertising purposes has definitely been undertaken for a while now, right? How many times have you been in a city or been in a place without a VPN turned on and you suddenly start getting ads on Twitter, for instance, about a specific city policy or something like that? Or if you turn on a VPN and say you're, you know, you start getting ads in different languages from the nation where your VPN is located, right? Some of these are based on IP address, right? So, where your internet service provider is telling advertisers where you're located physically, but other times it is geographic, right? How many times have you gone into a store, for instance, and you go to your shopping at a particular store and then you go back out to the parking lot and you're sitting in your car getting ready to go home and you get in a pop-up ad from like Google Maps or something saying, "Hey, we see you visited the store. Would you like to leave a Google review for the store you just visited?" That is a geofenced advertising thing that links your geographic coordinate with your advertising ID. That's the kind of thing that is happening right now. The reason that I wanted to highlight it is because it's now happening to target specifically Christians who go to a Christian church. So, the way that this geofencing ad campaign is being undertaken, and once again, this is using their own documentation from their FARA registration paperwork. So, please, please, please, please, please look at this document. Do not believe me in my explanation of things. Go read the document yourself and you'll see how dystopian this kind of thing is. But the general gist of how this works is you've got your cell phone in your pocket, you show up to worship services on Sunday morning at a specific time before services begin, and you take your cell phone into the church. Well, now your cell phone, because it has location services turned on and because your smartphone has an associated advertising ID, now the Israeli government is able to discern that your advertising ID is now linked with this establishment. And because you're standing in a specific circle, a geographic circle, around that church, because you're standing there at a certain time, they can push ads to your phone specifically that have one purpose, at least according to their documents. The one purpose is to encourage you to think a certain way about the October 7th attacks. Now, how will this work out in in practice, right? It's not like you're going to get an emergency alert push notification from, you know, like the emergency alert system or something like that. What it what it means is you're going to see ads apps. So, if you were so inclined to pull up Twitter, for instance, at a certain time of day while standing in church, you will probably get an ad that is encouraging you to think a certain way about the nation-state of Israel or about the October 7th attacks. That's what this media campaign is for. Depending on the apps that you have on your phone, it could also be a cross-platform sort of thing. So, a lot of people have a weather app on their phone, right? And that weather app is generally going to request location services. And a lot of people also have push notifications turned on for their weather app a lot of times, and depending on the weather app that you use, you may get ads as push notifications. If you've got like a kind of a more sketchy weather app, right? A lot of the free ones are like that. So, this is just speculating, but this is how I can see this working out in practice is you may get a push notification from your weather app that says, "Hey, by the way, look at this documentation about the October 7th attacks while you're standing in church." That's what this whole campaign is about, and that's what their own documentation states. So, that's why I wanted to focus on this because, you know, this is a foreign nation-state targeting Christians for simply being inside a church. And what are they targeting them for? They're targeting them to get them to think a certain way about a nation-state and to get them to think a certain way about a historical event. That's how you know that the narrative is true, by the way, when you have to get advertisements rammed down your throat when you're trying to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. So, yeah, that's probably the most I can say about this sort of thing. I would encourage you to just check out the primary source documents right from the dot gov website yourself and form your own opinions about what's going on here because there's only so much I can say. Now, when it comes to what to do about this and what to do to mitigate the effects of this strategy, the first thing to do is to check out the list of churches that are being targeted by the Israeli government so far. I will put in this video, I will embed in it so that it makes it onto as many platforms as possible, a scroll, a video scroll, of the list itself. It's a few hundred churches, so I will make sure to to put this in in its entirety. I know it's kind of boring to scroll through, but I'll put it in here anyway just so that you guys can have it for the record. But in terms of what you can do to mitigate this sort of thing, it must be noted right up front that this is not new, okay? This is not a new thing. I'm only mentioning it because it is faith-based and it is a foreign government who does it, and because I have the documentation, right? The Israeli government did what they're supposed to do, and they filed a FARA registration, right? This company filed a Foreign Agent Registration Act packet to the US government. So, we have the documentation. If they were a little bit more surreptitious, or if they went through the effort of cloaking this more in a shell corporation sort of thing, then we wouldn't even know. We would not know about this. We would not have their PowerPoint slides. We would not have any of the data that this is occurring. Again, this is 100% a case of survivorship bias. We have the paperwork in front of us, so we have to make decisions off of the paperwork we have. We cannot make decisions based off of the paperwork that we don't have, but, you know, surveillance operations that are still ongoing. So, maybe, just maybe, this will be a way of encouraging Christians to think in terms of not just them to being targeted because they are Americans, but being targeted because they go to church, because they are at worship services by foreign nations. And, of course, the follow-on effects from all of that, you know. The government says this is 100% legal and is not doing anything to stop this, obviously, because of the nation involved, but also because, well, you know, they've pencil-whipped this sort of thing into being legal over the years. So, in terms of mitigation, there's not a whole lot you can do. You can go all Jason Bourne and put your phone in a Faraday bag when you go to church, or before you go to church, turn off location services, put your device in airplane mode. At the very minimum, that may help. It may not help, but it may help. A lot of times, Bluetooth is also being used to link advertising IDs together. So, even if you are you turn your data off, even if you turn off your location services, your advertising ID is being linked with other Bluetooth devices around you. So, your phone is listening for any Bluetooth devices that are around, and it can be used to associate you that way with your advertising ID. Yeah, this is pretty much squarely in the realm of digital panopticon kind of thing, and it's pretty dystopian, but welcome welcome to the reality of the way the world's been for about 20 years now. It's just getting a little bit more interesting because even foreign nation-states are doing this sort of thing. They're doing it openly with very nice PowerPoint slides on this sort of thing. So, you can do it if you want. You can put your phone in a Faraday bag before you go to church, so that maybe your phone isn't going to know that you're sitting in church. You can turn off location services. You can some depending on which apps you're using and which operating systems and stuff like that, you may be able to go in and reset your advertising ID. I think Google has that as an option, but yeah, there's not a whole lot you can do. This may have happened before in the past. We just didn't know that it was being very subtle, you know? But, there's a big difference between minor surveillance that is being conducted in secret, or the general gist, or the general understanding that all Americans live under that, yeah, the NSA is probably surveilling me, right? Every American kind of operates under that assumption nowadays, but it that's a that's a big difference from that general abstract, yeah, the feds are probably surveilling me for some reason. The Palantir databases, right, are sucking up every bit of data about me, right? There's a big difference between that general gist, that abstract view, and a foreign government openly advertising, proudly so, proudly advertising that they are targeting Christians in the biggest ever geofencing campaign where they are siphoning up your data solely for the purposes of propaganda. They're not trying to sell you a T-shirt. They're not trying to get you to buy a cheeseburger, right? They're trying to sell an idea about a historical event to you. So, maybe you see why I'm a little bit concerned about that sort of thing. Again, because it is a targeting of Christians, there will be very little media coverage of it, and people will generally not want to care about this sort of thing because, again, that's just kind of the way things are nowadays. But, I wanted to focus on it because this is very important to me. Even though the churches that they are targeting are are not my churches, right? They're mostly mega-churches out west, but still, something to keep an eye on, something to be aware of, and something to start prodding people to be a little bit more serious with regards to living daily life. And, unfortunately, that now includes church life. So, now moving over to the counter-ICE efforts in both Portland and Chicago. Let's let's let's dig into this a little bit because this has become quite a complicated thing that hopefully we can discuss and and get to some sort of understanding with regards to what's going on with regards to counter-ICE efforts around the country. I wanted to highlight Portland and Chicago because these cities are both the point of consolidation for counter-ICE efforts in in these areas, but they're also very different, right? So, there's a lot of overlap between the two, but there's also a lot of differences between the two. So, let's start with Portland first. Portland is, of course, Portland, right? Portland is internationally infamous for being a very big far-left, communist, socialist, antifa Mecca, right? And, that's why they're resisting counter-immigration efforts there. Most of the counter-ICE efforts in Portland have arisen from a few different demographics. The first group are the immigrants themselves, which are a smaller group compared to the rest of the country, right? There are far fewer Mexicans in Portland than in Los Angeles, for instance. There are still enough illegal immigrants in Portland to cause trouble, but for the most part, most of the unrest in Portland is coming from the usual suspects, antifa, right? Portland is second to Seattle, a major antifa hub for the region. So, that's where a lot of this unrest is coming from, antifa trying to cause problems because they are antifa. The reason that Portland is worthy of note is because there's just a lot of them there. So, see this image that was posted by the Department of Homeland Security and a bunch of other sources, this was going around on a lot of these anarchist platforms and social media, where, by the way, they just maintain free control, right? If you're a leftist or an antifa member in the United States, you can post terrorist threats, you know, openly in on the internet, and nothing will happen to you, right? Yeah, I know, surprising because Trump's in the White House, and we have a hugely conservative government now, right? Allegedly. Yeah, no, antifa still has been given a pass by the DOJ to do whatever they want. Now, you can argue there's intelligence collection being undertaken. I very strongly doubt that because most of the people who work at the FBI, and most of the people who work at the DOJ, are far-left militants themselves, right? These people physically participated in a lot of these marches for these, you know, causes to show solidarity. So, whether or not the White House specifically, and, you know, Trump's core staff are trying to weed this out, I don't know. All I know is what's happening, which is antifa has no natural predators, which is why they're able to get away with stuff like this. Today, probably by the time this brief comes out, antifa is openly advertising and encouraging people to shine lasers at helicopters, specifically US military Black Hawks and federal and border patrol Black Hawks that are flying over the city to conduct raids. Yeah, very bold move. But, for those of you who think that the military's going to crack down on this, I would probably say probably not. The the laser thing was used in Korea for their protests a few years ago to bring down drones and things like that, and it worked quite well because people are correct in that if you are a lone, single individual, and you shine a laser at a military helicopter with very fancy optics and a laser of its own, you're going to have a bad time. But, if you've got 400 people in the street, and they're all doing it, all at the same time, and no one is interested in arresting these people, guess what? They're going to get away with it. Now, for those concerned about how normal this will become by leftist groups and leftist organizations around the country, there are some tools at the federal and military level that can help mitigate the effects of lasers being used on aircraft, but maybe we'll talk about that at a later time. I'm kind of curious as to how this is going to work out, especially in Portland, because this is the first time that they have openly stated they're going to commit a felony, and I'm curious as to how that's going to work out for them. But, anyway, that's Portland. Chicago is a whole other animal. Now, there's a lot of overlap between the two, but why is Chicago upset with the counter-ICE operations? It's not really antifa in Chicago that's causing a problem, though they do have an antifa presence there. Of course, antifa is going to be in every major city, and even some minor cities around the country, but mostly Chicago is upset for one reason alone, gangs. Chicago is upset because a gangs in Chicago run rampant, and they control the streets, and they control a lot of these places where immigrants are congregating. So, drug dealers are going to get it really upset if you remove their clientele from their ecosystems, and you remove their drug trafficking networks from their systems. So, that's why Chicago is upset, and that's why people are trying to take the fight to ICE officials there. Of course, it's also a political thing. A lot of the attacks on the ICE facility in Broadview have taken place due to the elderly, far-left, but also elderly individuals who don't really have anything better to do but protest and cause problems. That's kind of a nationwide problem, but it's also low-level stuff. The more serious stuff, like vehicle ramming attacks, shootings, snipings, things like that, those tend to be because of straight-up cartels being involved, and they don't like ICE taking taking the fight to their criminal enterprises, or far-left activism, right? So, a lot of these vehicle ramming attacks and a lot of these straight-up attacks on ICE are just due to politics, right? That's really the only way that you can encourage crime to not be policed is due to some kind of political thing, or because you're a criminal yourself. And, that tends to be how things have worked out in Chicago so far. So, Portland and Chicago are two very different cities, and they're taking the fight to ICE. They're conducting these counter-ICE operations. They're learning. They're growing. They're organizing. They're They're getting better funding, but they're two very different cities with a little bit of overlap between the two of them. So, that's why I wanted to talk about this in a little bit more depth because there's a lot of discernment that's needed. Yes, it is a very, very, very hard mission that has no real winning solution that's easy to get to. On the one hand, you've got federal agencies like ICE, which are trying, I think I think they're genuinely trying to do what they can, at least some district supervisors are definitely trying to do the best they can to prevent terrorists from harming American citizens, whereas in some other areas, we're totally fine with a foreign government, you know, surveilling Christians going to church and trying to target them with propaganda because we've pencil whipped that into being legal and we're just perfectly okay with that, right? So, there are some things that are doing good and some things that are not going so well with regards to counterinsurgency in the homeland, but we're here now, right? And we have to do the best that we can. And if we have to talk these things out without exactly knowing the exact perfect answer for things, well, that's what we kind of have to do. So, we'll continue to do that and keep an eye on the situation as we go forward. Now, moving over to the United Kingdom, jolly old England is not doing so jolly these days. There has been a lot of pushback with regards to the straight-up authoritarianism that's kind of underway in the United Kingdom, which is kind of ironic because a lot of the talk of authoritarianism is coming from within Keir Starmer's own party, right? And one of the things that's kind of come to light this past week has been the "no Coke for you" law, which is a new law that was instituted to ban restaurants and establishments who have, you know, soft drinks on tap. They are no longer allowed by law to offer you a refill for certain beverages, right? For your health, right? That's the kind of way that they're framing it. What is it really? What's really going on here? It's the same exact thing that happened in the United States with the paper straws. It has no real impact on anybody because obviously people are just going to go buy another drink, right? So, there if they want a refill, they're just going to buy another one for however much it costs. It doesn't prevent you from buying another, it just prevents a free refill. So, what is this? Well, this is a great example in power dynamics for for governments. And what this is is something trivial that the government can dominate a citizenry with that that impacts the citizenry on a personal level, but it's trivial. It has to be trivial. That's the That's the important part because what they want to say with this is we can we can impact you on such a trivial meaningless way, but we're still going to dominate you, right? The fact that it's a trivial is and has no real bearing on anything is the important part. They want to make sure that you know who's in charge. That's why the paper straws thing, which are wrapped in plastic, right? It's so trivial. It's so meaningless. It's so useless, right? But, it impacts you on a personal level and it's a way for the government to impact your daily life. It's definitely a psyop. It's definitely a The more, I guess, doctrinal term is information operation. Yet, really it's just a a domination thing. So, that's what that's all about, but the the British people have gotten a little bit upset about it. We've seen these psyops in America many times over the years and yeah, that's kind of what what that's about. So, the other thing that I thought was rather interesting is the developments with the digital ID concerns, which have deteriorated since the digital ID scheme has come to light. So, as you might expect, resistance to the digital ID scheme has been rather high throughout the United Kingdom. Basically, nobody, left or right, wants the digital ID scheme to come into fruition because of, well, many reasons. It's not just privacy, it's more of a data security thing. If you put all of your eggs in one basket, when a ransomware thief steals that basket, you've got yourself a bit of a problem. But again, it's often the little and seemingly meaningless details that kind of catch my eye on stuff like this. And this was the case with this article from The Guardian. At face value, all right, fine. You read the headline, it says, "Explainer: Why does the UK need digital IDs and what data will they include? Starmer's proposal has been criticized by rivals and civil liberties groups and campaigners worry about people without smartphones." Okay, so fairly standard mainstream media article from The Guardian, right? But here's the thing that caught my eye. This is how they chose to write this article. So, if you scroll down a little bit on the page, the whole article is is formatted like this section here on the right. And the first section is, "Why do the people of the UK need a digital ID?" And the second question is, "Why is Tony Blair involved?" Now, isn't that an interesting way of writing an article? Isn't that very fascinating? Sometimes the things that they say and the things that they choose to say and the things they choose to not say. This article to me was utterly fascinating because it is a perfect example of how articles are written sometimes, betraying what the article's really about. It's almost like reading a Soviet newspaper from like, you know, the height of the Khrushchev era, where they can't really talk about something directly, but they can definitely talk about it indirectly. So, this article's headline is trying to explain why does the UK need digital IDs and what what's the digital ID thing about. And the first two things they choose to talk about are, "Why do we even need this and why is Tony Blair involved?" The fact that they wrote these in this order and wrote about them at all, you know, why is Tony Blair involved? That shows you who's controlling the marionette strings with this, right? And I find that to be utterly fascinating to the point of hilarity that this is how they wrote this article. It's not like they started with, you know, "Well, you know, there's immigration, right?" Or cuz that's what the British government's perspective is, "Oh, we're doing this because of immigration." No, that's not what The Guardian says. The Guardian is trying to ask a rhetorical question or try to ask a question that the citizens are asking, which is, "Why do we need this and why is Tony Blair involved?" That is hilarious. And it kind of shows you what everybody's thinking about this sort of thing. Even though The Guardian's articles are, you know, it's The Guardian, right? So, anyway, I thought that was interesting that this is going over so poorly that they had to literally ask these questions and try to answer them in the most politically correct way right up front. And that's what the article's about. And I think this is interesting. For those of you who have mentally checked out because this is about the UK and you don't really care, I will I will see your Guardian article and raise you a Fox News article. This was published a couple of days ago on October 9th and the title of this Fox News, again, Fox News article is, "UK faces backlash over mandatory digital ID. Could US be next?" Seems like a fairly standard headline for Fox News, something you should probably would just scroll past, you know, unless you're watching it on TV, I guess. But the subheading betrays what Fox News is trying to push. The subheading reads, "Digital ID expert says controversy stems from fear, poor conception and lack of education." That's why I chose the Fox News article on this because Fox News, which has historically been the conservative alt-right boogeyman news group newsflash, it's not. Even Fox News is trying to push people to accept a digital ID here in the United States. Now, I could pull any other article from CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, all of these other, you know, the the the traditionally more leftist groups. Even the AP would probably have something positive to say about digital ID. But I chose this one specifically to show you that this is truly a bicameral effort. This is a bipartisan effort to try to shape perception here in the United States. So, when Fox News, of all places, is trying to get people to accept a digital ID and, "Oh, no, no, no, these fears are unjust. You just need to be educated. You need to be educated about what's going on with this digital ID thing." Yeah, that's something to be aware of. You can kind of see where where the the tides are are shifting on that sort of thing. But we all know how this goes, right? That's why I put these these images on the slide with this article because we know how this goes. We we've heard this before. The United States, guess what? We have had a national ID effort, the REAL ID effort, right? Remember that push from a few years back? In Congress, we had liberal politicians and conservative politicians unite together, uniparty style, to pass the REAL ID Act so that we had all 50 states, you know, all the states which wanted to participate in this program to have REAL IDs, right? To have identification documents, driver's licenses, which would be of one sort of same standard for things like TSA and interstate travel. There was this massive push from a bunch of conservative politicians, a bunch of liberal politicians. They both were talking about how great this was going to be for security and immigration and, you know, counterterrorism and things like that. And what happened? This week we found out that a lot of states were just issuing driver's licenses, CDLs, with no name given on them. These people can get on a plane with no name given driver's licenses because they're REAL ID compliant driver's licenses, right? So, yeah, we all know how this goes. We all know what's going on, but I thought it was very interesting in typical fashion cuz I tend to focus on things that probably don't really matter in the long run, but I found it was interesting, so I wanted to talk about it. But anyway, I find it very interesting that we're going to lock you down, we're going to make sure that you have this digital ID, but I wonder how many people in the UK and eventually in the US when this comes to the US, I wonder how many people are going to have a digital ID on their phone that says "no name given." Probably quite a few because they don't want these people's actual names, they don't want them in biometrics so that when they commit crimes, they have no record, right? Because I mean, you don't even know their name or anything about them, right? So, anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting how the digital panopticon is certainly here. However, that panopticon has blind spots in a few areas. So, some people get surveilled more than others, particularly if you go to church on Sunday. But if you're at an Antifa riot and you're shining lasers at helicopters, there's probably not going to be much that happens to you. So, anyway, selective digital panopticon sort of situation, which contributes to the very interesting times that we live in and the challenges we have to work through. So, so that's pretty much all I have for today and let's roll up with the intercepted Ghost Net reports where we can try to get a little get ahead of the information crackdown and try to increase our resiliency in a more off-grid, more radio-based way. This is the Ghost Net communications plan. It's a ham radio plan mostly, shortwave radio or HF high-frequency radio is a very interesting tool that we can use to communicate with people over long distances without having any sort of infrastructure in between. We created this Ghost Net plan so that we could all kind of get on the same page and have a more resilient way of exchanging information, not just for an emergency use or more of a hobby sort of thing, but more of a practical thing. I have been working on improving the Ghost Net over time to try to integrate some other systems and things like that. So, there is a MeshTastic channel for the Ghost Net. There There are also VHF and UHF options for those of you who just have the ubiquitous Baofeng, right? The infamous little radio that could, right? So, if all you have is a a cheap radio, don't feel left out. You can definitely engage with it. It's probably not going to be very effective for line of sight stuff. This is more of an HF thing so that we can connect people from all over the world together kind of at the same time. And that's kind of hard to do with line of sight, especially if you don't have repeater networks. This is heavily more of an autonomous kind of thing, decentralized sort of information exchange system. And as we can see, there's a lot of information being exchanged every week and even throughout the week. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it is one way that we can stay connected, especially if if everything goes out, if the internet goes out, if power goes out, if everybody's disconnected from one another, this is how we can exchange information over long distances fairly effectively. So, thank you to all of you who make the Ghost Net great. Thank you to all of you who participate in that and thank you to all you guys out there who are just listen only. Even if you're just listening and you and you don't have a license and so you can't transmit, it's good that you're participating in it anyway and trying to do the best you can to stay informed. So, that's all I have for today. Here are the sources for this week's reports. You can also grab the links and primary source material if I can if I can snag it on each Obsidian page for each wire report throughout the day. So, so even though I'm taking the wire reports from Obsidian and pasting them into social media, right? You don't see the source material on social media, you can click that link and then go to my Obsidian page where I have all of the other links. I have to do it this way because a lot of social media pages simply just deprioritize if they see that I have a lot of links in a in a post, they will just block that post and only I can see it, right? This is the way the world works, unfortunately. That's why my wire reports don't get pushed by Twitter's algorithm too much because even one link is enough to deprioritize this. But my priority is the information, not necessarily reach a lot of times on Twitter at least. And I want to make sure you guys can get access to the the primary source material if you want to investigate further, which you definitely should if you want to look at the primary sources that I use to make each wire report. I do the best I can to try to put those there. So, there's always more research to be had. There's always more ways to verify that information is true in today's age of significant information manipulation efforts, it's always good to try to get to the bottom of the truth as best you can, right? So, thank you to all of you who have stuck around. Thank you to all of you on Patreon who support me there and keep this work going. I really do appreciate it. Couldn't do it without you guys. So, thank you for that and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for July 12th through the 18th, 2026. This has been a very busy week, so let's get right to it. Just as a notice right up front, I also posted a dedicated podcast regarding my concerns on the growing flock camera scandal. So if you're interested in that, definitely check that out. The flock debate has gotten a lot of attention over the past few weeks, but especially this week with a lot of people suddenly realizing what exactly this company does and what other similar surveillance projects are in the works. And I cover my concerns on this in a dedicated episode so as to not bury my ranting in today's update. So check it out if you're interested. But this week has been very busy. So let's get right to it. And first of all, I'm making an executive decision to start with some good news this week because you know what? It's important to focus on the good stuff, too, wherever we can. Starting with Canada, the wildfires have continued to rage throughout the nation. As we can see from the fire detection satellites that have highlighted the extent of the fires, all of these dots are one square km squares where a large fire has been detected. Some of these are stale, but this gives us a general idea of where the fires have been burning and where they're still burning. Thankfully, fatalities have been to a minimum so far because the fires have been burning in really remote terrain. But a few days ago, a now viral video circulated social media showing a Canadian National Railway train getting caught up in a pretty hot fire as the flame front overtook them near Armstrong, Ontario. The video, of course, only shows a snapshot in time, and I'm sure there will be an investigation as to why they were there in the first place and why they did not know that the fire was getting that close. But the moral of the story is that they made it out of there. And from what I've been hearing through the grapevine, these guys did excellent work. Apparently, this was somewhat of a rescue mission whereby they were trying to get their foreman as a flamefront advanced and due to a coupling issue or something like that, the engine stalled or failed. We're not really sure, but the end result is these guys having to abandon the train and run 3 miles on foot to safety. Bottom line is that everyone made it out of there. Okay. And that's outstanding work. That's exactly what we should all strive for, doing the best we can with a bad situation that we didn't start ourselves. But it's our problem now and we've got to go to work. And speaking of problem solving, over in the United Kingdom this week, the UK has had another bit of good news. Earlier this week, the Crown Prosecution Service has declined to press charges against a farmer who shot a burglar dead in his home back in 2024. Two years ago, four men broke into the farmer's house in Wy Ridge, and the farmer promptly shot at least one of them, which later died of his wounds. It may seem a bit strange for us Americans for this to be such a resounding victory, but in the UK, they don't really have the right to self-defense codified as a natural right and law. In the UK, in nearly all cases, if you are the victim of a crime and defend yourself in any way, you are probably going to get prosecuted in some manner. So, this case is a drop of good news in a whole sea of bad. And I wanted to highlight that. Within the homeland this week, we also have some good news on a similar front as well. The third circuit court has ruled in effect that assault weapons are indeed still quite constitutional and that the New Jersey assault weapons ban is unconstitutional. It has been 36 years since this gun ban went into effect and this week it was struck down. And if New Jersey wants to fight it, they're going to have to appeal it to the actual Supreme Court, which they probably do not want to do. So, we can certainly take the win this week and keep pushing those goalposts as hard as we can. Moving to the Middle East for this week, like a broken record, I'm afraid the situation continues to escalate and we are almost back to the full combat readiness that we saw when the war first began. If we recall, when theou was signed, a bunch of aircraft had departed the region, mostly fighter jets and refueling tankers, which was a pretty big indicator at the time that the war was winding down to a point of stability at least. Well, as of earlier this week, all those aircraft that were initially sent out of the region have turned around and headed right back, and the United States has started staging a lot of these refueling tankers throughout the region once again. The Israeli media is reporting that the US is going to bring back all those tankers that we sent out of Israel. So, they're coming back uh to Israel now, or they're supposed to be over the next couple of days. We had a few dozen tankers there, I think. And those tankers in Israel were mostly used, at least for from what I can tell, they were mostly used for topping off a lot of the bomber aircraft that came into the region. So, once again, it looks like we're starting to step things up again this week. Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking. I had this theory, too. I thought maybe theou was just a straightup trick from the very start and that they never intended to draw down forces, which that actually may still be true. Certainly at the national level looking back, I don't think the US ever really intended to go by this deal because was just really hard to imagine being accepted by the US because it was just such a bad deal. Of course, it was a bad deal that we were kind of forced into taking because we had to take a suboptimal deal, but now it would seem that that's off the table and we're going to go to war for a little while longer. But regardless of the politics of all of this, and in my opinion at least, the US or at least the Air Force did indeed draw down forces two weeks ago. And we have every indicator pointing to the military actually drawing down forces when theou was signed. They did indeed do that. What the politicians were doing and thinking and saying behind the lines that's behind, you know, that's that's in the political realm. But clearly something changed. And I don't know what happened. Maybe it was a phone call. Maybe it was an organic change of heart. But whatever it was, the White House sharply diverted from the tenuous stability of the working toward a peace deal during theou period and they decided to just go uh fully back to war. Maybe the White House saw how badly things were going and how much power Iran had by signing theou and when Iran struck a merchant vessel for trying to sneak through earlier this week, the US jumped at the opportunity to justify starting a war again. That's the closest theory I can think of as to what might have happened. But the fascinating part of this is how disjointed it's been. we have that massive series of draw down efforts which then just got reversed earlier this week and that's a big clue that a decision was made and then changed. So that's kind of interesting. I'm still working to figure out what is actually going on on the political realm. I know not like a whole lot of people know what's going on these days in the world of politics, but politics is driving this war and trying to figure out what's going on is probably a worthwhile effort to some degree. What's far more interesting is the tactical situation on the ground. So let's start with what the Iranians have hit this week. The American bases in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, and Oman have all been hit pretty hard. Again, not as hard as the initial phases of the war, but still very substantially. Mufakal Salty Air Base was hit actually last night. I'm looking at the imagery this morning, and unfortunately this time, the Iranians hit the barracks. So, there is currently a very large fire burning among several buildings in the general area of the base housing. And early reports indicate that several US service members may have been wounded uh as a result of this attack. separately the Patriot battery in Airbial Iraq and the Himar's launch site in Kuwait were both hit as well with relatively unknown success on the part of the Himar strike at least. They may not have actually snagged the highar unit because they are way more mobile. They shoot and scoot, right? They move into a position, fire their missiles, then they leave. So, it's really hard to counter battery fire these at least when it comes to the Iranians. But missile defense sites are much more static and the missile defense site in Airbiel was kind of dug in. So, not super great. So far, Saudi Arabia seems to be the only Gulf state not targeted during this latest wave of attacks. However, again, as I'm recording this, I'm seeing reports of explosions being reported this morning in random places in Saudi Arabia. But again, I have not had enough time to verify this just yet. It's happening so fast and by the time I get this out, it's going to change. So, just kind of play it by ear on that. But the next logical step would be for the Iranians to start hitting both the American bases in Saudi Arabia along with the East West pipeline. That's what I'm expecting next. In addition to the more military targets, the Iranians are likely to continue hitting power plants and desalination plants throughout the region. Most of the Gulf states get their fresh water supply from extremely large desalination plants which are highlighted as green marks here on my maps. And in all cases, these desalination plants are colllocated with very large power plants that generate electricity for the region. And because they are located right on the coastline, these are really juicy targets for the Iranians. And with one or two very cheap drones, they can simultaneously take out the water source and the electrical power source for a lot of the region if they so choose. The Iranians have been really hesitant to climb what we call the escalation ladder. They're trying to not act with haste on pretty much anything. They're trying to be very measured, at least from their perspective. And again, that is the kind of the Persian way of war, not trying to act in haste and trying to make your enemy make a mistake before you have the chance to make a mistake. I don't know if that's working out for them. There's debate in the world of military doctrine as to, you know, what they're doing is effective or not. But the Iranians certainly have a lot of places they can hit and there are not that many targets in Iran that the US can do from a military perspective to actually mitigate a lot of that. In terms of what the United States has been doing, the American targeting has not been as heavy as during the early days of the war, but the target list has diversified quite a bit. None of the ballistic missile sites or hardened bunkers have been hit for a few weeks now. We've kind of given up on that, realizing that we just don't have the munitions to get through to these. But the US has shifted to targeting to critical infrastructure, namely bridges. Finally, the line is set up. Will the US go a bridge too far? I don't know because these bridges are mostly along the coastal region that is essentially on the back side of Ketchum Island. Maybe it's just a continuation of the Israeli strategy of mowing lawn. Or maybe it's something with a more deliberate end goal after scouring the Iranian coastline for almost uh 8 months now. I can say that the insinuation here that this is going to be preparation for some kind of either airborne or amphibious operation, that's probably not what's happening here. And if it is, God help us. Seriously, because that is a terrible spot to land. Anyway, I just wanted to point that out because that's probably what a lot of people are thinking. That's what I thought initially and then I saw where these bridges were being hit and I thought, "No, there's no way." I would bet that whatever we bomb tonight and tomorrow night will help us figure out what the game plan is here. Maybe it's shaping for something else. Maybe it's not what these bridges were being used for, but what they could have been used for. Maybe the US is trying to funnel traffic into a specific area for some reason. I don't know. Similar story on the high seas where the war has continued to stay pretty hot this week. Several merchant vessels have been struck and last night the Iranians claimed that two merchant ships actually hit mines in the minefield in the straight of Hormuz. I don't know about all that because I find it hard to believe that the Iranians would know the instant that a ship hit a mine, but it's certainly possible. Other than the possible mine strikes, the Iranians have been striking merchant vessels for taking the southern Omani route. Similarly, the US has been striking merchant ships as well for violating the US blockade, which has been back on since the US withdrew from theou. In general, this has not fared very well for the oil trade, and so far, not very many ships are transiting uh anymore, at least after the war was announced as being back on earlier this week. Oil futures did start to rise again, but as we've noted before, it's hard to put much stock in the paper price of petroleum these days, simply due to the market manipulation. Things are so crazy even economists who can usually make sense of the nonsensical can't seem to make sense of what's going on here. But what's quite clear is that market manipulation is just kind of a open mainstay these days. How this is going to affect the maritime trade, I don't know, but it doesn't look super great if we're hoping for this to end anytime soon. So that's kind of where things stand in the Middle East. Uh but before we wrap up today, I wanted to briefly touch on the war in Ukraine. The fight is much the same as last week, so I won't dig into it too much, but both Russia and Ukraine are continuing to strike each other from a very long range. Russia is making gains at this time on the Eastern front with Constantinfka falling to Russian control last week. Other than that, and some advances in Sunumi, the biggest developments on the battlefield have been the continued targeting of merchant ships in the Black Sea and also the regular strikes on petroleum infrastructure. Both sides are hitting each other's tankers and refineries or fuel depots in the case of Ukraine. And this appears to be a case of both sides giving each other a black eye. As with most of Ukraine's campaigns, they usually get the upper hand at first and usually make more progress than you think they would. They did this with Operation Spiderweb. They've done this with a few other uh campaigns like the Kursk offensive. They actually can do pretty well at first because mostly because they're being led by the Americans. But eventually after a while, Russia catches up and duplicates the trick and hits back way harder. Same story in the Black Sea. Russia is now routinely striking Ukrainian ships and the port of Adessa with long-range drones and unmanned surface vessels and all sides keep hitting hard this summer fighting season. So things continue to stay pretty crazy all around. Wrapping things up this week with the Ghostnet reports for today. Another great comm's this week. I saw a lot of different people checking in and working on a lot of other projects and setting up their little groups, testing things out, stuff like that. All awesome to see all around. And since we're talking about radio, I do want to remind everyone that I have a very unique podcast coming up with the tech prepper. We recorded a pretty good talk on all things radio a couple of weeks ago. And many thanks to Gaston for bearing with me and my spotty internet connection. But I think this was a very good talk. Looking forward to listening to it myself. And if you're interested, you can most certainly tune into it. So where can you listen to this podcast? Well, that's the interesting part. It's only broadcast over Shortwave Radio and it's not hosted anywhere else. So if you miss it, it's gone just like the old days. So, if you have a shortwave listening radio or if you have a software defined radio, you can get that set up pretty easily. If you know how to work the ghost net, you are already way more capable of picking up the transmission because it's just voice instead of data. The broadcast frequency and time slot are on screen for anyone interested, but I'll read it out just for those of you who are listening uh via audio only. There will be two transmissions. The first transmission will be on 7490 kHz. And that will be on July 26th at 2200 Eastern time. And the second transmission, it will be rebroadcasted. It will be re-ransmitted on niner 455 kHz. 4 days later on July 30th at 2300 Eastern time. So if you are interested in learning about shortwave radio and getting information in more of an old school and very very reliable way, you can listen to us have a bit of a chat at those frequencies and times. So that's all I have for today. As always, my research notes throughout the week can be found on my Obsidian page, and all of my mapping data can be found on either my ArcJIS maps that you view in your web browser or in KMZ format on my GitHub page for importing to the GPS app of your choice. I've also uh started publishing all of these wire reports to my Nomadnet page. For those of you who use Mesh Chat and Reticulum, as kind of like an off-grid or alternative grid information exchange platform, please bear with me as I try to format the page a little bit. I know it's kind of janky at the moment, but I'm working through it. But I'm still learning a lot about Reticulum and how uh the Nomadnet formatting works. Depending on your client application, the links may load a little weird, but I'm still working on it. So, please bear with me on that. But other than that, we're making pretty good strides here. I feel pretty uh confident in being able to have a lot of resilient communications so that we can all stay connected no matter what happens. So, thanks again for watching everyone. Thanks again for sticking with me over the years. And I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so today we have a sort of special seasonal episode for you uh in which we're going to talk about some considerations uh for conducting religious activities or practicing your religion under a tyrannical or oppressive system so uh right up front i just want to say that this is the i think eighth time we're recording this so forgive us if things don't quite match up because this is a very very hot topic a very very hot topic for a lot of people especially as we move forward into the height of the holiday season for 2020 and we have to realize that the the reason that we're talking about this is is really two-fold and the first reason that we're talking about this is that a lot of the coveted lockdown procedures or whatever we're calling those uh lockdowns now would be you know tyrannical oppressive maneuvers or legitimate you know medical things whatever you want to call it you have to realize that most of these coveted lockdown procedures are in direct conflict with the nature of religion so the nature of the coveted lockdowns and the nature of religion itself they're at odds with each other so even if you didn't have a tyrannical system you know that's a particularly tyrannical system that's trying to lock things down you know medicine isn't always at odds with religion right um but we have to realize that now a lot of tyrants are taking advantage of that so the nature of these code lockdowns you know in a sort of anti-societal lockdown procedure and you know over on this corner you've got you know your church or your religious activity which is a very community based a very person based very person to person very personal thing for a lot of people when you sort of put those two in the same arena they there tends to be a lot of conflict there and then also like i mentioned we have a so purely nefarious like there's no ifans or busts there's a pure nefarious activity going on when it comes to religion in a lot of areas particularly places like either texas or new york where politicians are ordering police officers to arrest people for conducting religious activities because those religious activities either defy some kind of coveted thing or just because they don't like them so you know even though the stuff we're going to be talking about today is mostly worst case scenario we also wanted to make this video survivable for the future so even though as we move forward into the 2020 holiday season you know the height of that we also wanted to point out that this video is meant to last for multiple years so even though we don't live entirely in a sort of chinese communist lockdown on religion situation here in america in 2020 2021 might be different thus the video right so we also wanted to point out that like i mentioned when people think of religious persecution they tend to think of things like you know the pilgrims coming over from europe even though that's not necessarily a perfect story that's what people tend to think of they don't necessarily think of anything modern and that's what we're coming at it from today we're coming at it from the modern perspective you know chinese religious persecution persecution of our religious activities in europe uh things like that um and as a result we wanted to once again point out that it's not our job to tell anyone what to do when it comes to their religion that's just not only is it none of our business but no one should be doing that um and you know like i mentioned we have filmed this a lot of times and the reason for that is it's very difficult to word things in such a way that isn't offensive or you know crass or some something wrong with it just doesn't quite sound right i can't tell you how many i've spent about six hours filming this so far and it's you know every time i'll just say something that doesn't sound right or it's just like man i you know that that did not come out right so forgive us if that's what happens we also wanted to point out that the writers that gave me uh the talking points for this episode today are not religious people and we did that on purpose we wanted people to write this from a non-religious perspective because of their ability to look from the outside in right so whether or not we have staff here that's extremely religious some people you know that are atheists or agnostic or whatever you want to call it and so we we had a think tank together and we wanted to write this from the perspective of someone who is not involved in really any organized religion right now but has knowledge of it right so if we don't get things necessarily quite right please forgive us we're not intending to be offensive or or anything bad we're just trying to come at this from an analytical standpoint so that should you know help out i'm sure that the comment section will blow up but we wanted to make it very very clear as with a lot of our stuff that tends to be inflammatory we have to spend a few minutes at the beginning talking about why we're coming at this and you know just to kind of make sure that everybody knows we're coming at this from a purely good and honest you know perspective so with that out of the way let's jump right into the first category and that is undercover agents so one of the things that has happened um for many many years now is people particularly law enforcement but other groups as well just the cases we have for law enforcement um groups or people uh infiltrating a religious activity in order to surveil it or conduct some kind of intelligence gathering and the example we have here on the slide is a screenshot from a video that was taken i can't remember some time ago it's not labeled here for me of three new york police officers i don't know if they were sheriffs or if they were nypd but these three guys decided that it would be a good idea to conduct a surveillance operation following i think it was the summer of 2020 actually because they were conducting surveillance of protest activity in a predominantly jewish community as a result of the george floyd protests earlier this year and they decided to go about doing that by dressing up in traditional jewish clothing they were wearing you know i forget the names but they were wearing traditional hats they had traditional jewish hairstyles they were they looked um to an outsider who is not jewish they looked like you know jewish people of the jewish faith uh coming or going you know from the synagogue or something like that they blended in to the crowd however and this points to one of the first bullet points here is that generally speaking outside infiltrators are extremely easy to identify when it comes to like surveillance so when this video showed up on the internet people of the jew people in that jewish community and really every jewish community that we saw there were tens of thousands of comments just slamming these guys they were wearing you know the wrong sized hats they were the reason they got noticed in the first place is that they were using cell phones on the sabbath which is not permitted in the jewish faith so they made a huge mistake there and that got attention put on them and then people started looking at you know some of their other clothing and some of the ways they were acting and it was just like they were sticking out like sore thumbs to people of the jewish faith so um that's something that's kind of easy one of the undercover agents sort of thing is easy to get out of the way uh right to start with um now it must also be noted that the nature of religion in most religions on earth tends to be very altruistic in nature you know people it's most religion had teaches tenants of of being good you know helping your neighbor things like that so some people will want to be that good-natured person and let in uh someone to a religious activity that is obviously an infiltrator right so we have that going on but we also have to realize that you don't want to be paranoid to the point to where your you know congregation or parishioners or whoever um start being paranoid towards one another right that's not something that we want but we did want to point out that you know law enforcement has routinely uh posed as religious personnel um when it comes to surveillance so that is definitely a thing to watch out for um so yeah that that's the news article that shows that they were caught using the cell phone uh on the the shabbat or the sabbath and then another thing to think about is the concept of informant neighbors so a lot of people nowadays are being taught by their government or their politicians to call in or report religious activities or really any like gathering activities they disguise it as gatherings so for instance you know the governor of oregon the governor of new york a lot of these governors are setting up either hotlines so that people can snitch on each other or things like that and thankfully the internet has been quite hostile to this idea but even though people have quit you know were quick to jump to like oh you know some karen you know calls in a you know a party or something like that we have to realize that today it may be a joke today it may not be a thing that we take seriously but tomorrow it could be a security threat so your karen neighbor or for lack of a better a less offensive term to people who are actually named karen out there um someone who is who is calling in these you know reporting they're sitting at their window with their phone in their hand you know calling the police to report their neighbor for walking their dog or something people who do that um they could very well be a security threat tomorrow so um we also have to remember that like i said on the previous slide that you know most major religions teach this sort of love thy neighbor sentiment right but this feeling is most certainly often more often than not not mutual when it comes to these coveted things so just remember that even though you want to be a kind person to someone else they know they may not be a kind person to you and when it comes to that someone not being kind could result in your door getting kicked in so um we have to realize that this is you know something apart from religion that the social engineering that governments have done on people as part of this covet thing that social engineering has worked it has been very effective because we have changed our culture in less than a year's time and there haven't really been any congressional laws telling people to do it it's all been either executive orders or just federal recommendations right so so we have to remember that even though we may have the best intentions for people and that we may want people to be uh you know safe and secure and things like that others may not so uh just keep that in mind and then another thing that is very contentious now and this slide is one of the main reasons why we've recorded this so many times is because i haven't found a good way to say this i'm just going to come out and say it is that a lot of religious activities particularly churches that have a hierarchical structure such as catholicism right you know have different layers of authority within the church a lot of these religious structures have been very tyrannical towards their own people people of their own faith right so the leadership of many religious institutions are quite frankly willing collaborators of infringements on their own religion right i can't tell you how many articles i have read that state that all these covet procedures are not persecution they are not persecution they're not infringing on your religious freedoms whatsoever but that's not true like this is just blanket propaganda that's put out by the church to infringe on itself which none of us here quite understand right and we have to realize that since that's the case this division right you have people that want to get together in a you know a small group or a group of like maybe 100 or so you know like most churches in the united states or synagogues or mosques right they want to get together in a group of maybe 100 or so or less and some people will want to do have an underground secret church that the government doesn't know about and other people within that congregation won't right so this division division within a religious institution almost always results in some kind of conflict breaking out now the severity of that is you know different you know it varies right over time um but since like i said most religions have a very strong sense of community and these internal problems could be very very severe so i guess to sort of sum up this this sentiment i would say that we must recognize that even now even in late you know mid-december 2020 which is when we're filming this we have to recognize that some people will want to comply more or less than you and that is something that that we have we don't have a solution for we have not figured out how to approach that other than just saying that is the case right we don't have a solution but we know it's true that some people will want to comply more than you some people will want to comply less than you some people will want to comply with every single thing the government says some people will want to comply with none of the government what the government says and there's very very different reasons for doing so so we must recognize that there's different thresholds there's different lines in the sand some people don't even have a line right so when it comes to religion which is you know teaches morals and things like that we have the potential for conflict there and the next up is the concept of transportation so if you wanted to have a under an underground church a secret you know house church or something like that you have to realize that we we got to look back at when this when this coveted stuff first happened right when this um when these coveted lock downs first happened i have personally driven through many military checkpoints and many police checkpoints when it comes to uh the coveted stuff so i remember having to to talk to either police officers or soldiers um say and explain to them why i was driving on the road so um we we got to recognize that the first time around when these checkpoints when active duty soldiers were manning military police checkpoints on u.s soil and no one said anything about it or very few people did right they they were effective they happened no one shut them down they just sort of everybody just kind of agreed to it right since that happened the first time it's most likely going to happen again and we're going to have these perpetual perpetually increasing levels of lockdown so just keep that in mind is that you're going to have transportation issues as we come forward into the next few years honestly so that's something to think about and like i mentioned another real solution for this to to the religious tyranny of say your governor or your mayor or something says no churches can can have in-person you know meetings whatsoever well this is where we you know come back to like i mentioned at the beginning we come back to the uh the playbook of chinese christians um house churches the concept of the house church a secret church in someone's literally in someone's house or home they have become extremely popular and quite effective in concealing underground religious activity in fact the chinese government itself even if they do find a house church a lot of times they if it's just 10 to 15 people or so uh they tend to just leave it alone or or just kind of turn a blind eye because they know that there are millions of these secret house churches all over mainland china so even the chinese government understands that they can't get them all so by decentralizing by having a decentralized nature of things uh having a covert church just in someone's house right it's very effective so you know that's what we're preparing to set up here in the future if things get much worse now when it comes to that you also have to remember that all aspects of the house church must be considered you've got to talk about you've got to consider things like how are people getting in and out of you know the church are they coming into the front door through the back door is there a secret entrance is there some kind of something that neighbors would notice would external surveillance betray the existence of the church in the first place you know stuff like that has to be considered quite quite significantly and then another thing that must be considered for specifically house churches um is the the stuff within the church right so although most religions on earth don't really have a whole lot of gear right they don't have a whole lot of of what government forces would most likely label as contraband right things that betray what was what's going on in a particular area so for instance if you know if you walk into a a a house somebody's residential area and they've got stacks of chairs in the corner or stacks of prayer rugs in the corner they've got you know whole bookshelves full of neatly arranged bibles you know religious artwork and thing and like you know child's crafts and things on the walls well you know what it looks gonna look like a church right there are very few churches in the world regardless of religion right regardless of what religion it is there are very few religious structures that you can walk into anywhere in the world and not know that it's a religious structure so um you know casual observers would instantly notice hey there's some religious activity going on here right so you've got to consider that a lot of these things are going to have to be stored covertly there's no bigger giveaway that house church is going down than to see you know like i mentioned stacks of bibles and shares right so this is where we get into the sort of dual use dual use nature of things and if you if you don't know what the nature of a dual use is it's something that can function in one way but can also function in another way for instance if you had large groups of chairs in your you know living room or something well that's going to imply that there's a large gathering of people there and there's really no way to camouflage that to make it look like it was something natural whereas if you have a bunch of you know like children's art you know on the wall you could say that it's your own kid's art right so you know you could do things like instead of having a bunch of either song books or or bibles or religious texts or whatever karan's you know instead of having them stacked up neatly on a bookshelf spread them out spread them out throughout the house right spread them out throughout multiple bookshelves so that it makes it like you just happen to collect them instead of they're there for you know people to come and use right you know everything also things like you know religious you know sacraments and things like that you know don't really know the terms for a lot of you know religious implements and items but if you have them in a specific area you you might want to you know move them around a little bit to make it look like it's something that you would own as a homeowner and not something that's set up as for like a church purpose right and then also we have to remember that certain religions have very specific things that could give away the presence of either religious activity or large groups of people so right now as we're filming this in you know like i said mid-december 2020 there aren't any governmental agencies or politicians cracking down on religion specifically they're not saying you can't practice your religion what they're doing is saying it's a de facto ban right they're saying that you can't have groups of more than six people in your home well that would preclude a church service right so that is something that it's not necessarily a straight-up ban of religion that's not what's happening it's a de facto ban on a lot of religion and we have to realize that a lot of different religions have different things that could betray them so for instance this is one that that came out earlier this year and we when we thought of it when it happened in september i believe it was september we were thinking hmm that's a good way to surveil people um so for those of you that aren't of the jewish faith the the holiday of sukkot or sukkot however you pronounce it sorry i'm probably butchering that it's a jewish holiday um in which very specific things have to happen so people of the jewish faith have to build what's called a temporary structure called asuka and these are very small structures you can see what they look like here on the um on the slide and there's various different ways of doing it but one of the very key key parts of the religious ceremony or holiday right is it has to be outside so if you look at a sukkah if you see a suka in someone's yard you know that they're jewish right you know the people who are you know of the jewish faith live there meaning that that's a good way if you're going around you could just be driving around on the road and you could see um you know that they mark them down as being a religious um pious person right so that's something that would make it very easy for someone a casual observer to either persecute or surveil someone right likewise you know um the you know people of the islamic faith also have ramadan and ramadan is has a lot of these kind of considerations things like fasting during the holy month of ramadan during the day meaning that you know people of the islamic faith can't eat or you know or drink anything during daylight hours so from sunrise to sunset um they tend to be very weak people tend to be very tired you know it's a very it's meant to be a very you know not a whole lot of work being done and for those of you who are in the military and served overseas in a predominantly muslim nation you you know that terror or insurgent groups take advantage of ramadans particularly in afghanistan every single year it's like clockwork as soon as ramadan begins terror attacks spike because they know that the a a the afghan national army or the amp afghan national police or any sort of authority figure within afghanistan they're going to be practicing ramadan but the insurgents are the terrorists the members of the taliban since they are on jihad seeing as they're they're on jihad they don't need to fast they don't need to partake in the mandates of ramadan so you've got a an insurgent group which is well fed rested doesn't have to pray five times a day they you know they don't have to do all these religious things in ramadan and then you have another group over here like the afghan national army they're going to be you know very tired very weak afghanistan is a very hard country to live in just normally i can't imagine how difficult it must be to not eat or drink anything during daylight hours um so you can imagine the forced disparity there so that is something that could potentially be betraying as well and also when the sun sets there are usually pretty good feasts so if i was some sort of governmental agency that wanted to catalog and go down the streets and see who's partying after hours i would definitely make note of these ramadan parties which tend to happen after sunset when when you can finally break the fast and uh it tends to be a more community affair so that's something for the islamic faith that not a whole lot of people know about and then of course you know christianity is pretty it's kind of an easy one anything that if you have you know a nativity scene in your yard as opposed to like you know some other sort of holiday thing people people know that you're probably a little bit more religious than than the average bear right so really you know any religious holiday is subject to scrutiny and surveillance because regardless of what religion it is usually the religious holidays of any particular religion involve people coming together right like i said in the beginning religion tends to be bringing people together so um you know holiday decorations that are more religious based tend to pinpoint people from the outside outside surveillance if that's you know something that's going on and then another thing to consider is that if you have it like this particular house church in china from a few years ago there are audio visual requirements to running a church right you have to have projectors audio systems computers other technical stuff to make things you know go right you have to have you know storage for different kinds of media you know at least in christianity you know music tends to be a very very common unifying thing so if you've got a you know very if you're if you've got a group of 50 people or so in a cramped apartment that are singing singing songs well your neighbors on all sides of you will probably hear that and report it so um you know singing religious music other audible clues that there's a lot of people in one area those are dead giveaways of religious activity so it's kind of hard to get around but it's something that you have to think about if you're going to want to set up one of these house churches and then another thing is just concealment right so one thing that has been this is not necessarily unique to religious considerations this is just like what we've been doing for a long time which is using these old school wartime tactics to help internal security so like blackout curtains perfect example of this like um you know if you use blackout curtains no one knows if you are awake or if you're asleep no one knows from the outside they can't see the lights on inside your house so that's something that would be helpful as well so for instance if you live in an area where everybody goes to bed around the same time and it's you know either rural or it's like kind of a i think it's like a subdivision set up if you live in something like that where there aren't you know groups of 100 people you know coming to a single house at one in the morning you know these kind of blackout curtains might be able to help because it allows you to sort of blend in with the rest of the neighborhood when it comes to the lights being on or off another thing that might be helpful not necessarily just for religious activities but things like birthdays and other other events which in which people get together is the concept of a faraday box or a some sort of box for your cell phone right it doesn't necessarily have to be a faraday box it could be just a normal box that you keep by the front door but a good practice i don't know if it would be easy to consider to convince people to do even we hear the s2 underground have a hard time convincing people to do it but it's something that you could do so like those of us who work in the intelligence profession they know that you know no phones of any kind are allowed in a secured area and usually outside the door of that secured area there's like a little phone booth there's either little lockers or something like a little table or something for you to put your phone so that you you know put your phone you come out you come out of your office you know every couple hours check your phone and go back in that's how it works in the intel community and this would be a great thing to implement for the civilian sector um you could even make it a fun holiday tradition where you know you force people to leave their smartphones at the door so that you could you know reconnect with friends and family without technology without anybody scrolling or you know snapchatting or anything like that but regardless it's going to be a pretty hard sell to make um but the reason that we're talking about this is because mobile technology particularly smartphones or as we like to call them spy satellites in your pocket smartphones are definitely 100 thousand percent being used to track people as as part of this coronavirus stuff so this whole um contact tracing right we like to call it contact tracing in society because um surveillance and intelligence collection sounds bad but that's exactly what it is it's tracking your exact location um so that whoever either private company or governmental forces can find you right so even though a lot of these contact tracing either apps or procedures are voluntary at the moment a lot of times they're not and and by the time we figure out that they're not voluntary it will be too late so they're not going to tell us that it's involuntary until they start enforcing it so um you know this sort of thing is something that we have to think about the sort of technical intelligence this electronic intelligence that's going on you know even though it may be a hard sell to get you know aunt sally to to to drop her her cell phone off at the door you know it's something that that might be necessary as we move forward into the future and you know years from now another thing that not a whole lot of people know about is the concept of mazent or measurement and signatures intelligence so imagine is something that not a whole lot of people even within the intelligence community know either about or they don't really know how to explain it because it's not an image it's not necessary it's not really a you know something that's like you know electronics not signs it's just it's measurement and signatures intelligence and one of the things that we think of when it comes to this is alpr systems or automated license plate reader systems so for lack of a better term or lack of an easier way of explaining this there are a lot of police cars public cameras security cameras and public traffic lights a lot of times are set up with these alpr systems and what they do is they scan it's a camera type system and it scans your license plate and what it does is it will tag your license plate with a geo coordinate meaning that hey camera number so and so saw this license plate heading this direction at this time and then that is put into a database so that people can you know so that law enforcement can allegedly use it to uh track stolen cars it makes it easy so that oh you know the license plate number blank was stolen you know two hours ago put it out on the system oh that license plate just popped over over here this intersection so let's go there and check it out that's what it was invented for but now we're starting to see these license plate readers be used to track people in their homes or in their own neighborhoods right so all it takes is a police car driving by your house to pick up your luck because these are 360 degree cameras a lot of times drive a police car driving by your house with it with it turned on the officer inside probably has no idea that it's even happening or in a lot of cases it's just automated and no one you know knows right so that if their camera happens to see a license plate it will flash up an alert for the officer so they can say oh oh dang look this this car's stolen um so it's automatic um a lot of times but you don't want your license plate in a database right so a simple solution would be to just back into your driveways the license plate isn't facing the road that way it just completely defeats the system now i know a lot of states out there have license plates that go on the front of your vehicle as well um so i don't have a really good solution for that other than just trying to park in such a way that if a car were driving by with a camera on it couldn't see your license plate so that's something that we've got to consider as we move forward now you know of course i'm not saying that this is happening oh my gosh they're surveilling our neighborhoods right now no i'm not saying that we don't even have any evidence of that happening it's just limited anecdotal stuff that's not really solid intel but we are saying that it's definitely going to happen in the future so this technology exists now the potential exists now but as we move forward into a new age of i hate to use buzzwords but you know like coveted tyranny right this is something that is probably going to happen very soon and then something else which is very interesting this is another concept that is we have to start realizing what is legal and what isn't legal in terms of what is actually going to be done about it so for instance thermal imaging so a lot of you probably have heard of the 2006 case of uh really it actually goes back to i think 2001 of police officers using thermal imaging to they were just parked on the street and they were using the thermal imaging to view to look at this guy's house to determine that he would he had like a a marijuana grow going on because the marijuana grow lights apparently get very very hot so the police looked through their thermal imaging system saw that his house was hot used that to get a search warrant and they busted him for marijuana well he fired he filed a fourth amendment complaint and went all the way to the supreme court the supreme court says yep law enforcement do not have the ability to using thermal imaging to search a place from the street is a violation of the fourth amendment you have to get a warrant first and then you can use your thermal imaging so that was back in 2006. but here's the deal just because the supreme court rules on something does not mean that something very very similar is already being infringed upon by a lower court so even though the supreme court ruled that thermal imaging is a blatant violation of the fourth amendment we have things like stingray devices so yeah like i said the supreme court ruled that the authorities scanning their home with infrared camera without a warrant constituted an unreasonable search and seizure bar search by the barred by the fourth amendment so moving forward to 2014 in tacoma washington um one of the very interesting things that happened was that from 2009 to 2014 um the county of you know tacoma their superior court judges unknowingly signed more than 170 orders the tacoma police and other law enforcement agencies say authorize them to use a device that allows investigators to track a suspect cell phone but also sweep cell phone data from innocent people nearby so here's the deal you've got in 2001 or really 2006 when the supreme court ruled on a 2006 supreme court says you can't use thermal devices without a warrant because that is a violation of a fourth amendment fast forward to 2014 after that ruling you've got tacoma police department lying to judges and telling them that they're not that they're signing a warrant for this but really it's for blanket surveillance and things like that so yeah these judges signed more than 170 orders for the tacoma police department but here's the kicker they did not know that they were signing these orders and also all 22 of these superior court judges first learned of the police department's cell phone site simulator the stingray they only learned what they signed the warrant for because the news media caught on to it so that's a huge thing as well so we need to stop looking at things from like oh the supreme court said this but you know so you can't do that well guess what you know you change the situation slightly oh it's not a thermal imaging device it's an electronic surveillance device instead well now that particular case has to go all the way to the supreme court as well so and it's unlikely to do so so um that's what we wanted to mention is that there are other systems out there just because the law says xyz does not mean that our nation's law enforcement will follow xyz it means that you know some you know it provides opportunity for doing good but not necessarily providing the infrastructure for it so that's what we wanted to mention as well so sort of wrapping up this very meandering and kind of random episode in which we try to speak very delicately about these sort of issues we wanted to say that we need to start being proactive and not reactive we we need to start thinking ahead instead of trying to play catch-up and really that's going to have to happen from each individual person it's going to have to be each individual church i do know that you know here at the usg underground project we may or may not be setting up you know places for these these churches right that might us you know start popping up so we need to start thinking about this sort of thing i i you know i understand that the nature of religion itself is that a lot of people would really rather you know not be around if they can't practice their religion and you know that's a person's choice but what we're trying to do is walk that line between practicing your religion in the most practical way possible also being as safe as possible about it so that's what we wanted to talk about today you know i'm sorry this is kind of once again like a very random sort of episode but it's kind of a hard topic to talk about it really is it's very difficult to talk about a lot of this stuff so yeah that's all we've got for this episode uh remember to check out our other content we have all kinds of stuff on youtube we've got videos on how to hide people in your home if if it comes to that we've got podcasts talking about it as well we've got a quite successful mini series of many hours of content on how to avoid some of this electronic surveillance and how how you can basically be a human being in 2020 or 2021 and not be surveilled as much as say somebody else so make sure to check that out 10 if you like the this youtube channel and the youtube content we have check us out on our podcast which we'll link below chances are if you like our youtube content you'll also like our podcast even if you're not really a podcast person we get that all the time people saying hey i'm not really a podcast person but i really enjoy the content you put on your podcast so check that out if you want if you also don't want to support youtube or if this youtube video gets removed we also upload all of our youtube content to lbry.tv which we will also link below that is a decentralized system that can never be taken offline so even if youtube decides to ban us for whatever reason we'll still be on lbry.tv so with that that's all we have for this time hopefully it was helpful we're probably going to put out more content on this in the future but until then we will see you next time so always remember to fight in the shade s2 actually out

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the briefing for friday the 24th of september 2021 and it is being recorded the day prior on the 23rd of september just a quick note before we get going uh we've noticed that for some reason youtube is now recommending these videos to people who have never even heard of us before even though we've been doing these intel briefings for quite a while now so for those of you who aren't aware of who we are and what we do and stuff like that you can check out the rest of our channel and kind of get a feel for what we do but when it comes to specifically these types of briefings a good distinction to make is the difference between intelligence and journalism so what we're doing here is not journalism even though a lot of times if we don't have an analysis we'll take the journalistic approach and just tell you what happened but if you're looking to see the difference between what we do here and what journalism is uh check out our brief from the 12th of september and that should give you a good uh just just the first few minutes of that video should give you a good understanding of how and why we're approaching things the way we are so welcome to everyone who is new and thank you for watching and let's get right to it with the weather for the next 12 hours most of the significant weather in the country is going to be in new england the northeastern states are going to get hammered with all different kinds of weather systems as they stack up and create all kinds of turbulence and things like that again we have specific reasons why we're talking about this kind of weather just to get people in the mindset of seeing it because because weather is a huge part of intelligence as a whole so like i mentioned most of the american northeast is going to have very low cloud ceilings cloud layers that are very thick and very low to the ground which means that it's going to be very bad for any kind of visual surveillance either with normal electro-optical sensors or flear-type sensors again if there was anything right again not saying that there is i'm just saying that that would be a good idea to get in the mindset of understanding and like i mentioned really throughout the rest of the country for the next 18 hours pushing out that far again some of the mid-atlantic coastal regions right there are going to have a lot of significant cloud layers all the way from very low levels all the way up to the very highest levels of the atmosphere so that's going to be a huge barrier for any kind of surveillance again if it were there we're also going to see some pretty significant cloud decks over the dakotas and other parts of the midwest mostly along the northern border there as well as off the california coast and parts of florida moving into no tams actually it's been kind of interesting for no tams there's one specific one that's very interesting i'll go ahead and skip over it for now and go right to number two uh the other the only other one that to be of note is one that hasn't gone hot yet uh it is for camp david so of course for those of you who don't know uh pretty much every single weekend that we've been following president biden takes a vacation trip to either his home or to camp david it looks like this weekend it's going to be to camp david um it hasn't been announced to be the white house yet but the no tam's there so it's most likely going to occur and for the one that's really interesting is the one for new york so for those of you who don't know the united nations general assembly is convening at the un headquarters in new york and they have a couple of no tams set up to prevent aircraft from from getting near those proceedings and a couple of days ago uh there was an incident in which a small uh light cessna aircraft got close to the general assembly no tam area now here's the interesting part the aircraft is actually a west point aircraft it's one of the cessnas they use for uh teaching classes in this case it was an engineering class that went on was just following the river down just to be a part of the curriculum there there's no sensors on board it has nothing to do with any kind of surveillance we've we've researched this aircraft this particular airframe quite heavily it's just a teaching aid but it's interesting because everyone a lot of media sites are saying that they breached the airspace well they actually didn't they didn't even come close so here is a map of the the area it shows the united nations headquarters right there of course the no tamp is not centered over the unhq just for opsec reasons the faa does not put the no tam directly over the building that they're trying to keep people away from but everybody knows where the un headquarters is it's a very prominent building on the skyline there so that's where it's located and those two rings depict the two different no tams and this depicts the flight of the aircrafts as you can see it flew south along the river and then turned around once it got to the george washington bridge he got turned around because he got intercepted by f-16s as part of you know our national defense strategy and things like that so a lot of people are saying that hey this aircraft you know temporarily breached the airspace well we can't find where it did uh unless we are unless we're missing something or some kind of no town popped up that we didn't see they didn't even come close sure it makes sense as to why the f-16s and the military would scramble to intercept a small plane like that especially if it wasn't a pre-pre-filed flight plan but also like these guys didn't really get close they didn't breach the airspace they got close so again it's kind of interesting that to see like how this stuff shakes out and everything but it also goes to show that you don't have to necessarily be within a no-tam to have an f-16 off your wing which is interesting to take note so that's why i wanted to talk about it today so let's move into the civil unrest forecast really no major changes the only one i did want to briefly mention is new york city uh they're we're starting to see a lot of cultural changes when it comes to the medical mandates in the city particularly the medical passports so we're starting to see blm as an organization get spun up to oppose medical passports due to their organ that organization's concerns and sort of social issues right so blm saying that it's a social issue now and we're starting to see that get off the ground i'm not entirely sure how that's going to go down there was a big incident at a restaurant in new york city you can look up for yourself but there was a big incident there where a restaurant hostess you know requested to see someone's passport and they took it racially and there was a big fight you could see the video i can't share the video here of course because we'll get censored but um i don't really really talk so much about that specific incident but i just wanted to highlight briefly that we might be starting to see new york city specifically since the mandates are so harsh there when it comes to dining dining facilities we might start seeing new york city be a point of solidification for a lot of these resistance efforts and we might start seeing these resistance efforts come from groups that don't normally we wouldn't think to see right if that makes sense but we can talk a little bit about that later but let's push into logistics and really just a quick rundown of the shortages from last time really there have been shortages of school bus drivers in a lot of states water shortage out west is continuing that's just an enduring thing that's going to be able to slide until until the winter gets in and we start seeing the water levels rise again also microchip shortage getting worse by the day more and more auto manufacturers are coming out and saying they're shutting down plants or they're reducing hours or they're discontinuing vehicles and really the only two new additions for this cycle this brief uh is uh in north carolina specifically winston-salem the town of winston-salem has declared they have a bus driver shortage for public transit and they have shut down 14 different bus routes as a result of this now i didn't want to highlight i didn't really drill down into each specific state in every little local newspaper this one just happened to get picked up by a larger source but i have seen just scrolling around the internet for a little bit a lot of different other cities and localities reporting the same thing so even though we only have the icon for north carolina that's the only place we can you know say hey there's tangible shortages causing routes to be canceled this is affecting other states as well i would probably venture to guess that the public transit bus driver shortage is very similar to the school bus driver shortage it's a similar idea behind it and also when it comes to the state of iowa i did want to point out uh grains so i'm going to talk about this more on the critical infrastructure slide but i did just want to point out that there has been a cyber attack that has that is going to potentially affect as much as 40 percent of the nation's grain supply so i'll touch on that here in just a second but i just wanted to highlight that's that's what we've got going on for the logistics map for this time so moving to the critical infrastructure concerns uh really the first one there is kind of the odd man out i didn't want to i don't know where else to put it so chantix the drug chantix has been recalled by pfizer because it turns out it may have chemicals in it that cause cancer so that has been recalled the recalls are widening with every day that goes by and yeah it's just one more thing to to be aware of because it's a pretty widely used smoking cessation drug and switching gears there to number two the port of los angeles is currently facing severe severe congestion as you can see by the image here there are a lot of ships waiting to offload cargo in the los angeles port region with some ships waiting an average of eight days or so to unload their cargo actually we can see if we pull up the recent report by the port of los angeles we can see that they are most certainly over capacity when it comes to the amounts of cargo that they're processing so for those that don't understand why this port is being congested it's really due to things like social distancing equipment cleaning daily screenings of staff this eats up a lot of time and the extremely strict social distancing rules that the port of los angeles has instituted for all their workers have resulted in a lot of inefficiencies right they're just not able to work as fast uh or or as uh widespread right so this is combined with an increase in demand for overseas goods results in a lot of delays a lot of people who don't quite understand how various logistical networks here function in the us might say something like well i don't see how demand could be up wouldn't it go back to the same level that it was before the lockdowns and the answer that is no firstly demand is always going steadily up all the time even if it's going up just a little bit it demand for things is for consumer goods is really never going down that much even if demand goes down due to an external factor like lockdowns right that demand is not going to go back to where it was before the lockdowns it's going to go to the level that it would have been at had the lockdowns not happened if that makes sense also during the lockdowns last year a lot of people and companies specifically put off things like unnecessary expenditures or repairs stuff that wasn't really an emergency because of well one social distancing rules closing stores but also the reduced income that almost every business suffered from they just didn't have the money to do repairs and and expand their businesses right well now that things are picking back up the demand for a steady stream of logistics is skyrocketing demand which our infrastructure cannot handle thus the delays moving to number three this is a developing situation that uh where we just became aware of uh this morning or actually last night the data management company really it's a an agricultural co-op an agricultural cooperative called new cooperative or any w cooperative was hit with a cyber attack that was conducted allegedly by the group dark matter which is significantly threatening the u.s food supply because the software systems that this group uses this co-op uses affects dozens of different farmers throughout the state of iowa but really it affects a lot of people beyond their borders as well because this software is used and responsible for managing the various agricultural systems of roughly 40 percent of farmers that produce our national grain supply so this is kind of a shocker this is one of those things where it's really hard to research we can't really confirm uh if this 40 of the national grain supply is is is in like direct harm really here are the things that dark matters is trying to uh trying to extort you can see the list right there just financial information all kinds of internal employee documents and things like that so it's not necessarily a it's a ransomware attack so they're holding their data hostage but they can't access it right so that's a problem because even though it's a ransomware attack you think okay well how can leaking some employee documents you know damage national security well if these farmers can't use if this co-op can't use its software and the farmers that use their software can't use it then that's a huge problem so these screenshots were leaked by a cyber security group that is working the issue and in which case this is a communication between the uh hackers and the actual company the cooperative as you can see it doesn't look to be super great so like i mentioned on our logistics slide this could have some very very very serious impacts as we move forward into the winter when it when it comes to our national food supply now i don't want to you know scream the sky is falling just quite yet uh we don't know how this is all going to work out they could pay the fine like the fbi has been encouraging companies to do and just you know they're they're uh i think the the ransom is up to 5. 5.9 million or something like that it's changed a couple of times that's why i can't remember the actual dollar amount they're asking but it's not an insignificant amount but yeah the longer that this goes on the larger impact this is going to have also this highlights every single one of these high these cyber attacks that happens highlights to us the feeling of really every time i get one of these in my inbox i think wait a minute this wasn't compartmentalized like wait a minute this this can happen in the first place so yeah even for people like us who have been following the national security and national defense infrastructure kind of field you know that boring stuff that nobody likes to track like you know nuclear security grain style security you know the security of water plant water purification plants and stuff like that even though we've been following this for a while now it never ceases to amaze us how backwards things are when it comes to vulnerabilities the fact that this kind of stuff can happen the fact that you can simply hack a company which manages software for all different kinds of agricultural ventures and it just so happens that they have merged so many times that they're now a significant portion of our national food supply yeah it seems like nobody was really thinking about this from the cyber security realm which is a lesson that not a lot of industries are learning right now even though they should be and sort of in a similar vein it has become public knowledge that the fbi secretly had the decryption key for the ransomware attack that was launched against the cassia group back in july this was the cyber attack that took as many as 1500 businesses that defined as critical infrastructure offline well it turns out that the fbi had the decryption key very early on during the several weeks long cyber attack and chose not to release it to the victims which many cyber security experts say was a very poor move understandably in the world of law enforcement to catch the bad guys deception is required and sometimes things need to be done that seem counterproductive like withholding a password right but in the end will result in capturing the culprits however cyber security experts say that this is not what happened at all eric krohn of the cyber security firm know before stated that quote the fbi had the means and ability to assist by simply sharing a digital key but chose not to a decision that had no bearing on the activity from the revel group and gained them nothing in return this was not a case of the fbi being unable to help due to a lack of staffing or any other reason but the simple sharing of a digital key to the victim organizations end quote now i do want to touch on what everyone is thinking this is one of those gut level assessments that has absolutely no solid evidence to support it but anyone who is aware of what the fbi does and what they've been up to the past few years and how political that particular agency has become at the senior levels it's a gut assessment to think all right the fbi had the key because they're probably in on it somehow again nobody is going to have enough proof to say that this was the case and this is one of those ideas that can be easily legitimately explained away because if the fbi was doing their job like if they were doing good and they were doing their job of course they would have the key like who else would you expect to have it the guy running the hot dog cart outside no the exact same people within the fbi that have the capabilities to launch this attack or collaborate with the attackers are also the exact same people that we should expect to have the decryption key by doing their job and tackling the bad guys so it's a really tough thing to go down the rabbit hole on because of the nature of this relationship so again i did just want to point out this line of thinking because we know a lot of people are thinking it and even we ourselves don't have enough information to make an assessment either way and honestly at the end of the day for the average american it doesn't really matter who committed these cyber attacks a russian hacking group or the fbi themselves it doesn't really matter because both groups have pretty much the same likelihood of being prosecuted which is zero so really we're not so much concerned with the finger pointing as we are concerned about the impact to the average american and all of these cyber attacks highlight just how vulnerable that average american really is moving forward into significant governmental actions uh first one being what's being called fedfest 21 on a lot of social media this was the justice for j6 rally which even people like donald trump said was a setup i find it hard to believe that federal agents are that bad at being undercover but a lot of the photos that have been circulating around you know of people that i don't know if they're federal agents or not but they seem to be very uh very sketchy like you can look at this person they they look everyone who was there at the protest looked like either a reporter or an undercover cop so um very interesting and it just turns out that there was one guy who was detained for having a weapon on him and it turned out he was an undercover undercover agent so there you go on that very interesting moving on to number two this is one of those headlines that's so scary sounding that you have to research it to find out if it's real or not but it's definitely real researchers are trying to figure out ways to use plants specifically plants like lettuce to grow mrna medical substances you know that magic you know v word we can't say on youtube that a person would just eat instead of taking a shot in the arm again this is one of those headlines that's so dystopian sounding that you just want to scream because we can clearly see the path this will take but to keep things in perspective remember it took forever to develop the shots that we already have and just look at their effectiveness right and also this is a long shot a lot of people look at a university and they see the funding they're getting for researching stuff and they they go into panic mode because they don't quite understand how long research takes now of course we can go down the rabbit hole of of realizing that not a whole lot of true research is done these days and a lot of stuff is rushed but this will still take years to do we're talking about something that has never been done before and it's a lot easier than just manufacturing some kind of substance we're talking about getting a plant to grow it that's a little a little bit different a little bit more difficult so yeah this is going to take years and a half a million dollars which is the size of the grant that the national science foundation gave for this research that's just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the funding that's going to be required for this kind of technology if it's even possible so to give as many perspectives as possible this could just be a case of a researcher who needs to publish research and chose this research area because it's politically motivated and it's a great way to get money to buy shiny new lab equipment and at the same time publish research that won't be held to the same standards as other research because science right concerning this topic cannot be questioned under the current political narrative that has taken root in the medical and science field so again we don't know what this is it could be extremely nefarious it could not be that nefarious or it might not be that much of a legitimate concern but i just wanted to point it out because this is the kind of stuff that we're keeping an eye on moving on to number three what's being known as the fbi safe deposit box theft the fbi is just now starting to dig itself out of a hole they dug with a raid they conducted back in march so the fbi raided a private safe deposit box company called u.s private vaults which is located in beverly hills only accusations of conspiracies to break federal laws during this raid they opened and seized the contents of over 396 safe deposit boxes but here's the deal the attorneys for the people whose property was taken states that the warrant for that search specifically prohibited the fbi from opening safe deposit boxes the warrant was just to search the business headquarters and had nothing to do with the safe deposit boxes so it seems like it was more or less illegitimate right to start with and once the fbi realized their either mistake or intentional theft once they realized that these people had not committed any crimes whatsoever they still petitioned the courts to be able to keep the money that they themselves admitted was illegally seized so several federal judges throughout california have gotten involved with this over the past few months and have ruled against the fbi at every step so the fbi has been trying to cover up this scandal by stating that they will immediately return the property that they stole but they have been slow about doing it several of the victims have reported that the fbi says they're going to return their property and the money but they haven't yet which is in clear violation of several court orders at this point moving on to number four with the duchonomy card i'm not sure how you pronounce it or not but this is uh again something that is rapidly concerning if you just read the headline and you don't do any research but this is a relatively new credit card company which was only started up a couple of years ago and it didn't get much traction then because it's definitely a radical idea so here's what it is the idea behind this credit card is that the company that issues it will track your purchases and compare everything you buy once they notice a charge on the card they will compare that to a database of carbon emissions for each of each item that you buy which is then converted to a sort of points system and when you hit your limit when you use up your carbon points you can't use that card anymore they will shut it off as of right now this card is completely voluntary and the kind of the main selling point for this card is that it is a good virtue signaling platform and a great way for people to quite literally put their money where their mouth is when it comes to climate change now also chances are if you're even watching this video in the first place you can probably guess what our assessment of this is going to be this card is also obviously a great way to influence culture and promote a kind of social credit system which even though it's kind of a voluntary thing right now it's pretty obvious that this would be an outstanding tool used to control people at you know years down the line or months down the line however long it takes right and if we look back in time since banks like bank of america and citigroup have already been observed to be collaborating with the federal government to try to report customers gun purchases to federal authorities which is a reference to a scandal from a few years ago this is not a huge leap to assess that this kind of thing will become a problem in the very near future started out as a voluntary virtue signaling thing and then and then start offering incentives to keep people engaging with these financial institutions until they get enough of a foothold in the political leadership's pockets to mandate these restrictions yeah that's quite the rabbit hole to go down but looking at things from a strategic view like looking at the way the world is going years down the road this kind of economic warfare will certainly gain a lot of traction over the next few years again we don't think that visa is going to cut off anyone's credit card tomorrow when they try to buy one too many lattes but this is absolutely something that is desperately important to keep an eye on but it's such a boring topic that most people simply won't and then number five facebook is back in the news again uh because they are launching a multi-platform effort to improve their poor public image specifically the image of mark zuckerberg this program is called project amplify this program was personally approved by zuckerberg back in january and involves using facebook's algorithms and their censorship tools to push more pro facebook posts to everyone's feed so essentially what this is is facebook pushing propaganda about itself in everyone's news feeds so that people get a better image of facebook to us this is really just even more proof that facebook is becoming increasingly more open about their politics and their censorship which is interesting if you look at it from an analytical standpoint facebook has had dozens of scandals over the past year alone that would have been enough to sink any other company but since they control a huge portion of the information flowing to everyday americans people don't see it they don't see the shelved reports or the white house overtly stating that they are ordering facebook to remove certain posts or the now blatant censorship efforts which sound crazy i will admit but it's freely available and openly admitted to by facebook so yeah social media proves once again how much control it has over the flow of information in the world moving on to the k through 12 mask mandate tracker uh so really the biggest changes uh this week are the kind of walking back of the mask mandate bans for a few states so for instance texas the texas supreme court they declined to enforce the mask mandate ban so if an entity in texas like a public school district wanted to mandate masks for public school attendance the supreme court would say yeah that's that's fine so texas has taken a step back so we've created an additional category for their mass mandates being overturned and also the states of arkansas iowa and florida in those states a federal judge has temporarily blocked the mask mandate ban so it's not that they're mandating masks is that that they are banning the ban if that makes sense this is really confusing stuff moving on to the actual jab mandates really there's only one school district in the united states that is still that is that is mandating the jab for their students and that is in the los angeles area so just went ahead and colored the whole state of california red because if they're going if california as a state is going to allow that to happen in one of their school districts we're guessing that it's going to happen very quickly and others as well then moving on to the actual resistance tracker itself so this was what i briefed last time and this is uh these are the updates for now so compared to last time we have we have a pretty good idea as to how each state's government and state level enforcement agencies will go when it comes to medical mandates again this map is not perfect by any means it's not as hard and fast as it might seem right it is solely meant to depict based on all of the information that we have seen where we think the medical resistance hot spots are when it comes to state level enforcement attempts for nebraska for instance i have no idea what's going on with state level leadership and here's what i mean this is an excerpt from a statement posted by governor pete ricketts in which he urges people to get the jab but in the exact same statement there are several paragraphs that undermine the shot and talk about how it was rushed into production and the mistrust on the federal level maybe i'm reading into this too much or not enough i i don't know but you can read the confusing and seemingly contradictory statement yourself the link is in the sources at the end of this but it seems that some states are pro-jab but anti-jab mandate and even within that category there are states that seem to be anti-mandate but only because the federal government beat them to the punch and the mandate isn't their mandate so i honestly don't know what to make of states like nebraska when it comes to the likelihood of resistance efforts being allowed to grow by state level leadership again we've got a pretty good idea as to what the citizens of nebraska think but when it comes to enforcement agencies specifically the way this working out is still it's still disconcerting similar situation in idaho i've changed it back from red to orange in the wake of more politicians at the state level organizing a bit better but the governor is extremely still pro-jab and he has been doing everything he can to promote it to include striking down a mass mandate ban that the lieutenant governor put forward so clearly idaho is again one of those weird situations where they recently announced that they might be suing biden but when it comes to state level government and specifically any potential enforcement agencies it's a very hesitant resistance that we have little faith in actually being substantial or reliable in the long term and moving on to international issues so first up is kosovo so border guards in kosovo have started removing serbian license plates from vehicles entering kosovo stating that they are not recognized as being official this is increased tensions in the region as the serbs have started protesting holding up traffic and the like right now serbia and kosovo are in talks to calm down the situation diplomatically and as far as why this is worthy of mention this is really just a minor diplomatic spat but due to the history between these nations and a significant us military presence in kosovo it's worth keeping an eye on up next is the united kingdom so bp has announced that they are having to ration gasoline and diesel for their gas stations in the uk due to the intense driver shortage that is resulting in not enough people to drive their fuel trucks so this is not exactly a shortage of fuel there's plenty of fuel it's just there's a shortage of drivers that is resulting in a shortage of fuel again this highlights the importance of boring stuff like logistics and how the slightest seemingly minor problem can snowball to result in widespread disruptions in vastly different areas up next is taiwan so this past week has seen an increase in chinese aircraft being flown into taiwan's air defense identification or interdiction zone for those that do not understand what this means china likes to assert their dominance over taiwan by flying their aircraft kind of near taiwan's airspace this gets really complicated when we start to define what airspace actually means like are we talking an economic exclusion zone are we talking about a national defense zone you know which airspace are we talking about and other diplomatic stuff like that but just know that china frequently does this actually many other nations do this as well like the us and russia frequently do this to each other but this week the massive interdiction by over two dozen aircraft is almost certainly in response to taiwan formally requesting a bid to join the cptpp trade agreement which china does not like moving on to australia so the resistance efforts to their lockdowns and passport controls and things like that are is definitely heating up in australia as the demonstrations continue uh throughout this week when it comes to the actual videos we're seeing we are seeing a trend anyone who has a pair of eyes can clearly see the trend that while yes it is easy to doctor videos or crop videos in such a way as to paint the australian police and military in a in a not good light what is plain to see despite uh the fact that this can happen is that we're definitely noticing that australian defense forces and police forces are becoming a lot more violent uh in their response as the unrest grows so we're starting to see things that are really really dystopian when it comes to an american perspective of things and uh clearly many australians agree that that it is in fact quite dystopian so the unrest is continuing it will likely continue as long as government forces continue to force the mandates and then finally moving on to lithuania this is an interesting one so the national cyber security center which is nestled underneath the lithuanian ministry of national defense has conducted an in-depth study of smartphones that are made by three of the most well-known chinese smartphone manufacturers these studies are indicating that the phones will censor themselves for instance there are several words and phrases that are blacklisted and are not allowed to be seen by the user so if you try to read an article or an email or download an app that has these words and phrases anywhere on it the phone will actually not allow this content to be seen or downloaded by the user and this image here on your screen is just a part of that full list of terms and phrases so so yeah we encourage you to take a look at that full report because it's very fascinating to read a lot of these chinese technological devices just having built-in censorship tools at their coded into them at the software level which is very interesting how they're doing this and considering that companies like huawei which is one of the ones that is uh actually named in their report is one of the biggest culprits of this censorship and considering that huawei was just recently given permission by the us government as we revealed last time that us by administration has given permission for them to import computer chips uh semiconductor uh chips in a time of global shortage now this gets a little bit more interesting now doesn't it so something to keep an eye on uh again i think that it's probably common sense for people out there if if you're looking for a burner phone and if you value anything uh anything like privacy you're probably going to avoid a chinese state-sponsored company but it's very interesting to actually see a european nation starting to talk about this stuff so fascinating stuff all around so that's pretty much all i've got for today i know kind of a short day today but we're probably going to see a lot more stuff pop up over the weekend and we'll uh we'll meet you back next week with another briefing again thank you to all of our new viewers and thank you again to all of our enduring viewers that continue to help support us as we try to get these briefs cranked out so again if you haven't checked out our other videos chances are there's going to be some cards up on the screen that you can take a look at and some of the more pertinent videos and to kind of explain why why we have the mentality that we have and why we're approaching certain things a certain way so there's always a reason for everything and chances are we've probably explained it somehow or another but here are your sources for this week kind of a lot of sources uh considering that a lot of the stuff is just hold overs from a few times ago but lots of sources when it comes to the links that we can drop and again i can't put the links down below in the description box because one they're too big and two youtube doesn't like us linking to outside sources uh and they have we've confirmed that they uh they don't let our videos get seen by a whole lot of people if we tend to uh drop those links down below so again this uh the slides for this powerpoint with clickable links will be available from our odyssey page which we can link below and uh also chances are if you're watching this on patreon the slides will be attached to the post so again thanks as always and we will see you next time and always remember fight in the shade

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for October 12th through the 18th, 2025. This week has been kind of a mixed bag. There have been a lot of kinetic things going on around the world, but most of those kinetic things have also been taking place over the past few months. So, this week has been a little bit more nebulous in terms of world events, which has possibly tempted us to be a little bit more complacent. Rest assured, there's plenty of activity going on around the world. So, let's get right to it. First up here in the homeland this week has been a continuation of the civil unrest in places like Portland and Chicago and New York. ICE operations continue. Counter ICE operations continue. This morning, as I'm recording this, the No Kings protests are supposed to be underway nationwide. It's pretty much the same story as before, but again, it would not be a good idea to be complacent with these things. So, if you look at the map on their own website, they're clearly using or reusing the same map as before. So, all of these uh listings that I have clicked around and found are the same as the first round of No King's Protest. So, they're clearly doing the same thing over again. They're trying to make it look like there are demonstrations in places where there aren't. If we recall from the very first round of uh No King's Protests, most of these events never happened because why? It was a SCOP the first time. I know we suspected this the first time and we kind of said there's no way these events are going to happen or if they are, you can look and see that they're scheduled at different times. So they've got the same group of people, the same group of paid demonstrators being busted around from from event to event to event in an area. So instead of one big protest that takes place all day, you've got 15minute protests that occur in 30 different places. So it looks like there's 30 different protests on their own little map here. So again, this is very much manipulation of of information. And so because of that, we might be tempted to be a little bit more, you know, lax, especially considering that the last time I I kid you not, they emptied out a lot of retirement homes so as to pad their protest numbers. Now, again, we can be complacent with even this idea, too, because you might be tempted to think, "Oh, well, these, you know, these people are elderly. They're living in an old folks home, and they don't know what's going on, right? They just, you know, they just like the chance to get out, right?" Unfortunately, many of these people actually are quite cognizant of their belief systems and actions. And a lot of them, you know, even the elderly, very much endorsing of this behavior. So, you know, there's give and take. There's a little bit of, well, they're they're taking advantage. They're exploiting the elderly for to pad their protests. And then there's also the other side of things where the only people that agree with these people are, you know, the extreme elderly, right? So, it's kind of a mixed bag. It doesn't really look good for their cause. I mean, a lot of people are expecting mass pandemonium from these no kings things, but it it just turns out to be mostly the elderly uh on the street a lot of times. That doesn't mean that things can get pretty kinetic in some areas. Like I wrote yesterday, it's it's pretty likely that some small local groups, particularly in the usual places, Chicago, Portland, uh these people will take advantage of the chaos or rather the attention and uh try to cause some problems. So, for the most part, there's this very unique blend this week of legitimate terroristic kind of concerns, but also there are events that aren't really that big of a deal, but they're trying to make them a big deal. So trying to discern which one's which is uh pretty challenging sometimes, but generally speaking, you can look at the demonstration and see if this is going to be a low-level thing or is this going to be more of a highle thing. So it's going to vary widely uh across the country. So speaking of variation, moving down south in South and Central America, the war continues as before with Venezuela. A full-blown war has not yet been declared. However, the United States has sunk two vessels this week. one of which was the typical fastboat, but the other one was a narco submarines. Either way, the United States is certainly not backing down from Venezuela. There's been some rhetoric on whether or not this is a posturing thing and this is uh Trump's classic style of trying to, you know, bully a foreign nation uh into doing what the United States wants. That tends to be uh the way things work out sometimes. And honestly, that would probably not be a bad tactic to use against uh Maduro and Venezuela because that's just kind of the thing that Central American nations and South American nations tend to respond to the most. Some have made the argument that the decision's already been made to launch a ground invasion of Venezuela to replace Maduro. I don't know about that. There's really no way to know. All I know is that it ain't over until the fat lady sings. And so far, everything that we have down in South and Central America can be moved right back to the United States fairly easily. But also, the United States could invade Venezuela pretty easily. So, clearly there's a there's a lot of bluffing going on, but I think it's probably more strong arm and less bluffing than anything else. But, I guess we'll have to see. I'm continuing to build products and work on the IPB or the intelligence preparation of the battle space for Venezuela, just in case things start getting pretty spicy because around the northern part of South America, things are not looking so great. uh such as in Ecuador. Ecuador is currently on fire mostly in many different ways. So Ecuador has been pretty hot for a while now, but nobody cares cuz it's a small nation. It doesn't really have that much impact on things except things like the drug trade. So either way, we'll get into that in a bit. Over in the Middle East, the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has reached ceasefireish territory. It is still holding for the most part, but we have to remember how things work in the Middle East. There's no such thing as a ceasefire or a peace agreement. there's just temporary halts in the fightings. And even still, when there are ceasefires, there really aren't ceasefires. So, there are skirmishes back and forth. Israel has done a couple of air strikes. They've uh shot a few people with sniper uh and sniper attacks. Same thing with Hamas and Gaza. So, you know, the the crossber fires between the two continues. It's just that the major bombings and the major assaults have stopped for now. probably the best we can hope for at the moment uh in terms of regional stability, but we'll see if it lasts, right? That's the classic phrase being uttered around the Middle East. We'll see. Over in the United Kingdom, the digital ID roll out has begun with uh a small sample group. So, they're starting to roll the ID out with veterans. We'll get into that more in just a bit, but suffice it to say, people are not very happy. Perhaps equally as irritated are the Afghans and Pakistanis who are currently at war with each other. They have taken on the classic south or western Asian mentality of conducting an attack, bombing their enemy, and then immediately withdrawing and declaring a ceasefire. And they both have done this. So the Taliban and Afghanistan will get their convoys. They'll get their whatever rockets or mortars or whatever we left them, roll up to a Pakistan checkpoint, shoot it up, immediately withdraw, and then 5 seconds later say ceasefire. Right? We'd like to agree to a ceasefire. And then Pakistan does the same thing. They bomb cobble and say ceasefire, right? So depending on which news source you read, which honestly I don't trust any news source with this particular war because they're they're both insane. Uh but the general story has been bomb ceasefire, bomb ceasefire, bomb ceasefire. So like there's there's no telling what's going on. Each one of them wants to engage in tit fortat warfare right before the ceasefire. It's you know it's kind of like they always want to get the last word in. So my guess is that this will probably continue for a while. India has also been poking the bear quite a bit and encouraging the Taliban to attack their mortal enemy Pakistan. So, same story as always pretty much. But either way, India and Pakistan engaging in a bit of a proxy war using the Taliban as the intermediary is a little concerning considering India and Pakistan both allegedly have nuclear weapons. Always something to keep an eye on. I know nobody cares about India or Pakistan. Uh but still something to be mindful of when they're engaging in a ground war with an insurgency. Down in Africa, the nation of Madagascar has entered into a state of well, a failed state. Their government has collapsed. A military ruling council. Honestly, really just the general of a small military unit that happened to be in the capital at the time has seized power more or less. And the president has fled on a French military jet. Uh although he still tries to maintain some kind of control over the country, but good luck with that. Either way, Madagascar is not doing so hot. It has been the latest in the African nations to fall. Uh but again, it's a fairly standard African coup, so we'll see how it works out. And finally, the trade war between the United States and China is utterly confusing, especially with regards to the flip-flop of the White House becoming rather concerning uh when it comes to the will they won't they status of tariffs. First, the tariffs are on at 100% hardline strong arm kind of position, and then 5 minutes later in an interview, uh everything's fine, everything's reversed, we're not doing anything. So, I don't know what's going on, but we'll get into it a little bit anyway because there's a couple of things in the world of finance that may be interesting for this week. When it comes to strategic movement this week, it's pretty much status quo. A pretty good chunk of the US Navy is still parked off the coast of Venezuela preparing for whatever they have in mind down there. And that's really uh the big bulk of concern for this week. Uh same as always, pretty much. And for kinetic events here in the homeland, again, uh Portland and Chicago unrest continue as before. It's just that it's settled into a kind of a slump of uh complacency, I think, and people are just kind of accepting the fact that these very dangerous times have have settled upon many major US cities when it comes to immigration. Speaking of insurgency, this week, a Hamas fighter, an alleged Hamas fighter. Really, he wasn't really a member of technically a member of Hamas. He was a member of a splinter group, so it's just easier to call him a Hamas fighter. But this dude was picked up in Louisiana by the DOJ uh for taking part in the October 7th attacks in 2023. So again, I thought that was kind of an interesting thing. Yes, the FBI does have a task force for investigating these sorts of things. So there may be more. Who knows? But I find it kind of interesting that a Hamas fighter turned up here in the US. I don't think very many people are surprised, but I think it's kind of interesting. And also, like I mentioned, the No Kings protests are taking place today around the country. We'll see how it turns out. My guess is there will probably be a shooting or two at random events around the country, possibly due to accidents or misidentifications like last time. Who knows? But we'll see. I don't have much to touch on in the US this week except for one kind of interesting item of note, which is the world of finance has been very interesting this week. I am personally not a finance guy. I'm only looking at this through the lens of international stability and trying to use the financial markets and what's going on there as a way of gauging how uh international sentiment is kind of flowing, right? You can kind of tell these things sometimes and it looks to be like a pretty big period of uncertainty, right? That's kind of the theme this week in finance is uncertainty and there have been a few things that have kind of exacerbated that. So, first of all, the the tariff threats last Friday uh caused the markets to crash quite a bit, especially uh the crypto market. So, Bitcoin took a dive after that as as you could probably imagine, which a lot of finance guys have have commented on. But I found it interesting that insider trading appears to be a fairly good constant. I know, shocking, right? Somebody in the president's circle having insider knowledge and making financial decisions on that. I'm shocked, shocked, I say. But anyway, this whale uh closed a $127 million short on Bitcoin just a few minutes before President Trump announced the tariffs on China. So yeah, not super great. Looks pretty suspicious. I find it very very interesting that that all of this kind of happens within the past week or so, especially in conjunction with what happened in the world of crypto a couple of days ago. The Department of Justice announced a few days ago that they conducted the largest Bitcoin seizure in history. At the time of the seizure, it was roughly 15 billion US dollars worth of Bitcoin, just for perspective. So, a pretty big seizure. The current Dr. Evil mastermind behind this is Chen Xi. And this was this was not a small thing. This was a uh pretty big seizure of crypto. And the reason that this was such a big seizure of crypto is because they were making a lot of crypto off of this. Uh it was a pretty big scam. They had created a large large Fortune 500 company style organization for scamming people over the internet. So for those of you who don't know what pig butchering scams are, it's this is basically like a combination of your Nigerian prince and a honeypot scam. So what they'll do is they'll find people, they'll target people in mass uh on places like Tinder or other dating apps. It's usually where they kind of hang out and they're playing the long game. uh they will befriend someone, start start an online relationship with someone and eventually get them to invest crypto. We see where this is going. Invest crypto in this fake company and they'll make it look real slick. They'll make it real good. They'll even provide some return on investment. You know, like, oh, you've made so much crypto today. Look at this. Put more in and put more in and put more in. And they're fattening the pig up, as we can see the name of this scam. And then eventually one day once they've decided they've fattened this pig up as much as they can, they disappear. They cut and run because it's crypto, not your keys, not your crypto, right? So they make off with a lot of money. Interestingly enough, the DOJ, to the best of my knowledge, I will I'm going to dig dig more into this, but to the best of my knowledge, they have not exactly stated how they seize this crypto. My suspicion, this is pure speculation, my suspicion is they found the seed phrases uh that this company was using to store all their crypto on these various wallets. So once you have the seed phrase, you've got the crypto and that's probably what they did. found that to be very interesting especially in the context of crypto being kind of in the news and also President Trump creating the national strategic Bitcoin reserves whereas previously the previous uh policy was to whenever the FBI or the DOJ were able to actually gain access to seized Bitcoin the policy was to just sell it for US dollars. Well, now the US government now holds this crypto. So they're not selling these 100,000 plus Bitcoin, right? which is interesting because it now means that the US government is now a major holder of crypto. Uh, and the crypto world right now is very volatile as it always is, but especially lately. So, what does all this mean? I have no clue, but I thought I'd mention it anyway because even though it looks like nothing's happening in the world or nothing happening in Washington, it's pretty busy and there's some pretty significant uh indicators of global instability all around the planet. Very interesting stuff though. Now, let's move down to Ecuador for a minute and and briefly touch on what's going on there. Sorry, I haven't made a map for Ecuador just yet. Ecuador is, like I mentioned earlier, on fire. Uh, in some cases, quite literally, there have been quite a few IED attacks to strike Ecuador. These IED attacks have mostly been carried out, I don't know if how how coordinated they are, but they've mostly been carried out by a lot of mining groups, or rather gangs affiliated with illegal mining of natural resources and minerals throughout Ecuador. the government's uh declared a lot of military immobilizations to crack down on this illegal mining which is of course used to fund narco trafficking and things like that. So it's a very complicated web of of dissatisfaction down in South America. I know same story as always but still the people of Ecuador have not been very happy with the uh president Nabboa. A lot of people, a lot of locals are saying that he has conducted a lot of false flag attacks against himself to make it look like people are attacking him so that he has justification to lock down the country and deploy the military. I don't know how true that is. I mean, it seems like it's a fairly chaotic situation down there. The times they are a changing. Destabilization is the name of the game in South America. I think it probably always has been, but still. And speaking of Venezuela, it has again been very kinetic this week. We now have a total of six sunk vessels. Five fast boats sunk and one submarine sunk. Venezuela seems to certainly be quite convinced the US Navy and the US Marine Corps is going to go in and wreck their country. So Venezuela has shut down most of the uh crossber checkpoints and crossings around their country. Granted, it's not like they had a particularly high amount of crossber traffic anyway, but they've they've started fortifying things and they've started uh putting a lot of blockades up to make it hard to transit around the country. Whether or not the United States is going to go into Venezuela remains to be seen. However, Venezuela seems fair fairly convinced the threat's real enough uh real enough for them to do drills, not like it's going to help them that much. Uh but still, they're preparing for the worst, which, you know, may be a goal. It may be all a scop to get them to exhaust their resources, but still the tensions remain high regardless. Similarly, switching gears all the way over to jolly old England, the situation in the UK has not gotten any better. As a matter of fact, it's gotten quite a bit worse with regards to the digital ID. One of the interesting things that a lot of uh citizens in the UK have noticed is every day that goes by, they add some mysterious thing that the digital ID will be required for. So, initially it wasn't for anything. It was the digital ID was for things like voting and to have a job and that was basically it. Well, over time the government says, "Oh, well, it's going to be required for this and this and this and this and this." And suddenly they've just added a new thing every day. So, uh, yesterday they added alcohol purchases. So, now if you want to get a pint, you know, at your local pub, you've now got to have a cell phone on you and scan your digital ID, you know. So, that's that's not gone over super well. There's been a pretty good mass uprising with regards to protests over the digital ID. Doesn't matter one one bit in the UK. I'm sorry to say protesting in the street does not do one lick of good because the government is just doing whatever they want to do. There is absolutely no concern for anyone, even their own constituents whatsoever. The only thing that protesting does in the UK right now, and I think this is why people continue to protest, uh, is that it shows the public just how many people are on their side. Because one of the big things is when you ban protests and people don't protest, even if they they don't agree with something, protests are demonstrations in the street of the sheer number of people that may be on your side. So if the protests were not happening, people might be sitting in their home alone, you know, just like during COVID and they and they may be thinking to themselves, man, I don't agree with X, you know, I don't agree with this issue, but because they don't see people in the street, they think that they may be alone in their idea. But the British people have made it quite clear that this is a something that the majority of the population does not want. Most people do not want this ID thing and doesn't matter. They're doing it anyway and they've actually started rolling it out already. So the British government yesterday said they're starting to roll out uh the digital ID with veterans. So 300,000 veterans uh will be issued with digital IDs. And I'm sure that will go over swimmingly, but we'll see. My guess is that it's going to be pretty disastrous because it's a government app and well it doesn't matter if you're the UK or the US. Government apps don't tend to work super well. So I guess we'll see how that works. But my guess is that it's going to go over not very well at all. But they are moving towards this at breakneck pace. If you recall they first mentioned this digital ID thing just a couple of weeks ago and now it's being implemented. Now granted, digital ID and well, a national ID of some sort has been in the works for decades now, but really it's kind of interesting how how much they've stomped on the gas with regards to implementing this around society. And once again, for the Americans who don't really care what's going on in the UK, here's the link to you. The news stands this week have been full of articles on a wide array of topics. everything from Denver signing contracts with Flock to use their AI uh flown drones around the city without a warrant or anything like that. Same thing with judges ruling that police departments can now use Flock cameras out of the warrant in Virginia. Then of course we have the recent news which broke last night that Flock is going to be partnering with Ring, Amazon's Ring services, so that all Ring cameras are now going to be Flock cameras. So even though we in the United States don't really have anything at all to do with a national ID system in the UK, you might actually be indirectly involved due to the intelligence sharing agreements between the United States and Britain. So something to be mindful of. Not a whole lot you can do about it anyway, but I try to keep an eye on these sorts of things just so that we don't become complacent. So we'll keep our eyes open. We'll keep an eye on all these uh things going on around the world and we'll try to do the best we can to not be complacent. And though I may be quite a bit biased on this, one of the ways that you can do that is, you know, working on basic skills like communications. How's that for a segue into the Ghostnet Reports for this week? I know radio is hard and it kind of sucks a lot of the time, but it's it's something that's going to be pretty helpful. I think it's already proven its utility and this week is no exception. A lot of reports, a lot of news, a lot of people sharing information completely off-grid. You do not need internet access for this and this is a good way for people to exchange information over long distances. I am quietly working on improving this uh quite a bit to integrate it so that it works with a few other things, not just JSA call, but some of you already know about the projects I'm working on uh that are uh in the world of communications and battle tracking and stuff like that. So hopefully I'll be able to tie a lot of this stuff together in due time. But for now, the Ghost Net is a great way to exchange information with each other, keep our skills sharp, not get complacent, and continue moving forward. That's all I have for today. Thank you guys all for watching. Thank you for all of your participation and support over the years. I really do appreciate it's what it's what keeps this project going. So, thank you all for that. Here are the sources for this week as usual. And you can always find my research on my Obsidian page if you want to double check any of the uh reports throughout the week. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you guys again and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for April 5th through the 11th, 2026. Hope everyone has had a good Easter week or Holy Week, respectively. Christ is risen indeed, and I hope everyone got some downtime to take a little bit of rest this week because around the world, it has been a rather tense roller coaster of events over the past few days. Of course, in the Middle East, the ceasefire has gone into effect, but it has been hanging by a thread since its inception, which we'll get into later. Throughout Western Europe, protests continue to grow in size and scope in Ireland due to both the fuel crisis and also the growing concerns of government overreach. Protests have become more kinetic throughout the day, and as I'm recording this, things have gotten a little bit spicy, so we'll have to cover this uh once things calm down a little bit and see how it works out. And on the home front this week, general crime and terrorism concerns remain as crime season throughout the United States is well underway. So, starting off with the homeland this week, there have been a series of brutal murders and attacks carried out by the usual suspects. While we have been focused on the Middle East, there have been several items of note that took place last weekend and also throughout the week. In Maine this week, more details have come to light regarding four men who were apprehended by Border Patrol in the vicinity of the St. Zachary Port of Entry on Golden Road shortly after crossing into the United States from Canada. At the time this story was announced, it did not get much traction due to most headlines beginning with four British men detained or something like that. However, a few days ago, more details were released, and it turns out that the four British men were actually four British men after the Border Patrol released their names, which are as follows: Ali Muhammad Ali Abdullah, Hamid Muhammad Nagui, Ibrahim Ayub Khan, and Muhammad Sultan Salah. Additionally, all four men were found hiding in a concealed position by sugar maple workers who were operating in the general area near the actual port of entry. The suspects had bypassed the checkpoint on foot and attempted to hide after hearing people in their general vicinity, but ended up getting caught anyway. After search of the surrounding area, Border Patrol agents tracked their position back to the Canadian side of the border where they found a vehicle which had run out of gas, and after they searched the vehicle, they found a handgun under the driver seat. One of the main reasons as to why we know so much about how this incident unfolded is due to the suspects recording the entire illegal border crossing on a GoPro camera. The footage from this GoPro confirms that they were indeed attempting to cross into the United States illegally, and they confessed all of their series of crimes on the video. The suspects also Googled how to get to Boston using their phones that were found on them at the time of their arrest. Considering the sheer amount of incriminating evidence the suspects compiled on themselves, it's possible that these guys were not exactly terrorists, but more like freeloaders who have been known to cross into the US from Canada knowing that the southern US border is much harder to penetrate nowadays. It's not impossible, but it's far easier to get into Canada and from there into the United States just by walking through the woods, which appears to have been the case here. So, despite the immediate reports saying that these guys were just lost hikers who accidentally stumbled into the United States, well, Border Patrol's testimony is that they've got a video of the guys uh them talking themselves about how they knew they were trying to get into the United States illegally. So, we can't really be sure what uh details have not been conveyed to the public yet, and it's quite likely that we can't see the whole story. So, definitely something to keep in mind, especially if we're uh going to be on kind of heightened alert for terrorism attacks over the next few months. The northern border with Canada is most certainly porous, and if these idiots got found, I can only imagine that somebody with more experience and more deliberation who's not going to be walking and talking loudly through the woods recording their crimes for Instagram on a GoPro might have a little bit of better chance of success. Nationwide, around the country, murder season is well underway, unfortunately. In Fort Myers, Florida, one suspect was arrested after murdering a woman with a hammer outside a gas station a few days ago. This extremely graphic murder was captured on the security cameras at the gas station, and it's so graphic that I can only show one frame from it. The murder took place after the suspect was observed hitting the victim's car with a hammer, and when the victim exited the store to confront the suspect, she was murdered in an exceptionally brutal manner. The suspect has been identified as Robert Joachim, an illegal immigrant from Haiti who was released into the United States in 2022. Over in Ohio last week on Easter night, a potential terror attack was reported in Franklin after a very suspicious series of events. Initially, the situation began after one suspect drove his vehicle into the driveway of a private residence seemingly at random. The suspect exited his vehicle and began Islamic prayer in the driveway. After some time and after security cameras notified the homeowners that there was someone outside their house, the suspect approached the front door of the residence and attempted to make entry. After being denied entrance by the homeowner, the homeowner eventually exited the residence to confront the suspect. The suspect then threatened the homeowner with a knife and told him that he would kill him in the name of Allah. The homeowner retreated, and the suspect departed the location. A short time later, the suspect was apprehended after ramming or attempting to ram his vehicle into someone else in Clear Creek. The suspect was eventually identified as Anthony Long, and very few details have indicated what this entire situation was all about. This could have been a just random crime sort of thing, or it could have been something more organized. I don't know. There really hasn't been any comment from the local authorities on this one, so we're going to have to keep this one on the back burner and flag it roughly as being a just a random crime until we know more information. Moving to North Carolina this week, DeCarlos Brown Jr., the assailant who murdered Irina Zurutsky in Charlotte back in August of last year, has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial on state murder charges. This finding actually took place back in December, but just came to light this week after his public defender filed court documents requesting a continuance based on this designation. The federal charges still stand, and right now, there are conflicts between the state and the feds regarding how to proceed with this trial because the state is arguing that since he's in federal custody, he can't be evaluated by the state, and since he can't be evaluated by the state, the competency hearing can't go forward. As to what this means for this very high-profile murder case, it's not entirely clear at the moment. This is Charlotte, after all, and it's become quite a unique place to be since there is a lot of emotion and uh social attention on this case, and there's no telling what might happen. So, this is something to keep an eye on just in case this individual ends up getting the slap on the wrist that everyone is expecting. Moving to Texas last week on Easter Sunday, one assailant attempted to carry out a mass shooting at a church in Houston. Local authorities state that Emmanuel Mombevi initially gained entry to the church and began handing out flyers to congregants during the service. After being approached by security on site, he was removed from church grounds, but after some time, he returned to the church armed with a firearm and 100 rounds of ammunition, and after he attempted to draw the firearm in the church, he was tackled by the security team. During the fray, he also allegedly attempted to detonate an IED with his cell phone, but afterwards, it became clear that he did not have any explosives on him. So, quite a kinetic week for the United States this week. Don't want to dwell on it too much, but the risks are quite paramount. Whether or not you want to call these terrorism incidents or just the state of what general crime has transitioned into is uh going to be up to you, but the brutality of these kinds of things has uh definitely become quite paramount this week. Moving to the Middle East, so far, the ceasefire continues as well as to be expected for a ceasefire in the Middle East, which is a huge caveat. For those who are not aware of the cultural traditions of the region, ceasefires don't usually mean a whole lot, and they don't usually mean a total ceasefire, but rather a cessation of major attacks. Since the ceasefire went into effect, several drone strikes have been reported in both the UAE and in Kuwait, and the UAE did conduct some targeting efforts after the ceasefire went into effect as retribution for the Iranians hitting their oil refineries very hard. The UAE was not going to sit back and let the Iranians hit their oil facilities and then the ceasefire go into effect the next day. The UAE was definitely going to settle the score on that front, and that took place after the ceasefire went into effect. And of course, the Israelis have been carrying on targeting as usual, though they weren't really carrying out that much targeting within Iran over the past couple of weeks anyway because they are fighting a very hot war in Lebanon, so their forces are spread pretty thin. Concerning the terms of the ceasefire itself, or really, we should probably be causing calling it more of a pause than a ceasefire because nothing has been written down. Not much is known regarding the exact details of what this ceasefire or pause is all about, and there's certainly really no indication of how the general state of peace talks might go. Historically speaking, this is perfectly normal, and one of the reasons as to why ceasefires are usually transitioned into a lasting peace agreement to settle a conflict. Perhaps the most notable exception to this rule would be the Korean War, which is mostly just a ceasefire which was put into place without really hammering out a complete and final settlement to the conflict. So, considering the history of the past, I don't know, half a century or so of warfare, ceasefires normally transition into some kind of peace agreement or some kind of peace understanding over a period of time, but not always. The fighting can always resume as has happened several times in Ukraine, for instance. There have been several ceasefires in Ukraine which have taken effect, they have gone into effect, and they have ended, and the fighting has resumed. So, the same thing might happen in Iran. In terms of the tactical situation on the ground, there are a few items of note that I'm keeping an eye on this week. First and foremost, the minefield in the Strait of Hormuz. This is the bounding box for where the Iranians have stated that they have laid mines, but as the United States is finding out this week, the Iranians don't really have any demining capability. So, they can place mines, but they can't recover them. And the White House has stated that the Iranians don't exactly know where their mines are located within this zone. As strange as it sounds, this Wile E. Coyote mine-laying operation is actually part of standard Iranian doctrine because remember, when the Ayatollah was taken out and their comms were severed at the beginning of the war, their decentralized command structure entered into its fight to the last man mode. So, they were not expecting to ever win the war. They were expecting for everyone to fight to the death, essentially. When this level of defense doctrine is is in any nation, not just Iran, but any nation that is pushed into a corner like this. You don't really care so much about picking up mines later on. In the initial days of the war, the Iranians were fighting for their very lives and certainly were fighting a state of unrestricted warfare where nothing was off limits, at least on the first couple of days. This was by design and after a few days the higher-ups were able to get control again. I suspect, and this is total speculation, that in those early days of the war individual commanders at bases were acting independently and they probably deployed some of their mines out while they could assuming that they might be dead in a few days anyway. Thinking from the perspective of a local IRGC commander, that's what I would have done. You're sitting in a dusty bunker watching the Americans bomb everything in your country, comms are severed, reports are coming in of Tehran being hit, the Ayatollah's dead, and we're on our own here, right? So, get on the boats and get our munitions out there based on the plans that have been cooked up decades ago. It's a fire sale, everything must go right now. Or at least that's what these guys would have been thinking. The drone launchers send everything they have. Anybody who can do so gets in the fight and the small boats with one or two mines on board put to sea and get their mine in the water knowing that they probably won't see the sunrise the next day. That's the mindset these guys were operating from during the early days of the war. Fast forward to today when the Iranian regime has not collapsed and the world has not ended for them and their military posture can be more measured. Well, at this point the mines are already in the water and when Abdul was burning out the engine in his small boat to get his crew's mine in the water in the dead of night, he probably wasn't looking so closely at his GPS, which was probably being by his own people anyway. Now, other means of implacing mines probably came from submarines because a huge mission of their submarine fleet is to emplace mines underwater in the strait. Rumor has it, again, I don't have photos to show you, but rumor has it, at least a lot of the long-standing doctrine that has existed before this war was put into the mainstream civilian consciousness, it has been an assumption that a lot of the IRGC's mini submarines are actually launched from James Bond Dr. No style like caves that they've cut into the side of the waterway there on the coast of the Persian Gulf so that you can't really hit them. They're like submarine pens during World War II. Very hard to target, very hard to get at, and the submarines are so small they can just go out into the comparatively shallow Persian Gulf and do whatever they want to without really being detected very easily. Now again, maybe the US sunk every single one of these mini subs during the initial phases of the war. I don't know. Maybe we struck all these places. I don't know. That's the whole point of all of this is an unknown. And for sure this was certainly a multi-layered approach that we don't have a lot of fidelity on simply because we don't know what the Iranians did during the initial phases of the war. And honestly, at this point it's quite possible that the Iranians themselves don't know either because if a little miniature submarine goes out and lays two or three mines or if a fast boat goes out and, you know, lays one mine and they get sunk with an airstrike before they get back to base, it's pretty likely that nobody, not even the Iranians, are going to know where that mine is actually located because they didn't make it back to base to tell everybody, "Hey, we put the mine at this grid." You know? So, suffice it to say this is a major concern that can only be alleviated by the US Navy. Lloyd's of London, the main insurance corporation that underwrites high-risk insurance policies such as those for ships transiting the strait, is not going to approve a single policy unless the US Navy clears the minefield and very publicly transits through the minefield area with their AIS transponder turned on so that the whole world can see that the route is safe. This is the bare minimum expectation for returning to normal in the strait. And I say that because this morning when I'm recording this, there are reports of US Navy vessels, which have been in port in the Persian Gulf this entire time, that may be moving toward the Strait of Hormuz. If that is the case and if they can start ensuring the freedom of navigation through the alleged minefield, this would be a very positive development for getting things back to normal. However, it's also possible and quite likely that the Iranians will tell them to turn around or fire anti-ship missiles at them and then we're back at this again. But once again, this is a developing situation that is going on right now, so more details are to be expected later on. Another situation I am monitoring is the buildup on all sides during this lull in the war. The Iranians have claimed to have repaired several of the bridges that were struck just a few days ago, which is hard to believe, but construction projects in the third world go rather quickly when you don't have to worry about OSHA, and the Iranians are heavily motivated to put down their rivals and grab their e-tools while they still have time. Similarly, the United States has been pouring resources into the Middle East replenishing resources as best they can. As a result, we will have to wait and see how the ceasefire works out. If it turns into a full-fledged peace plan, that's good. There's no harm, no foul, and maybe we can put this all behind us. But if a deal cannot be reached and the fighting resumes, it's going to be intense if things pop off once again. As a result, for those who may be breathing a sigh of relief that the war is over and, you know, the Trump tacoed and it's all over, I wouldn't be so sure about that just yet. Let's not count our chickens before they hatch here and I very highly doubt that the forces that have driven this war so far are going to be looking to let go from this conflict so easily. This conflict has been half a century in the making at least and I don't think this is over just yet. Of course, the war in Lebanon is a complicating factor for all of this as well, but by and large, at this point the strategic goals for all parties, but particularly the United States, is simply to undo the effects of the war and return to the normal state that existed before hostilities commenced. That seems to be the strategic goal, to get back to the way things were before we started this war, which is not necessarily a good sign, but that's what we seem to be trying to do, to get back to the way things were in terms of the strait being considered to be international waters, back to the merchant shipping carrying on as usual, back to the US being able to have military bases in the Middle East, and back to the way things have been for decades. However, even though this is clearly a goal at this point, in many ways there will be no going back. Iran maintains a lot of power right now and over the next few weeks the United States is going to have to play catch-up with regards to achieving their military objectives, which the United States might be preparing for as resupply and rearmament efforts continue around the region. In short, we are most certainly not out of the woods just yet and not only is peace not a certainty, but it's looking pretty unlikely on the diplomatic front unless the United States and Israel are willing to accept a lot of concessions and by default allow the Iranians a strategic victory. This does not seem very possible at the moment unless the war actually went way worse for us than we thought it did and we're willing to now make a lot of concessions, but otherwise doesn't seem very possible in the in the short term at least. But again, staying on the hopeful side of things, anything can happen. There are a lot of moving parts and things are changing by the hour, so hopefully we can see how things work out on the diplomatic front over the next few days. And on that note, that's all I have for today. So, let's finish up with the intercepted Ghost Net reports for this week. For those who are not aware, I don't just make PowerPoint slides and maps, I also manage another line of effort called the Ghost Net, which is a project to bring a more informational side to the world of radio. If you do not physically own the wires, you do not own the communication. And if your communications, your messages, your DMs, your emails, your newsfeeds, all that stuff, if all that's going over somebody else's cable, then they have the ability to influence it somewhat. Though it may seem to be an odd combination to try to smash together the world of geopolitics and the world of amateur radio, this is a good way to ensure that resiliency is possible even during more contingent situations. In short, if Twitter goes down or there's some kind of cyber attack that takes out a major data centers, we'll still be able to have some sort of effectiveness in exchanging information during a crisis. As a side note, that's one of the ways that the world of intelligence is separated from the world of journalism. Journalism is supposed to convey just the raw facts of what happened in the past. They may not do that these days, but that's what they're supposed to do. Whereas intelligence is a career field that uses those raw facts to figure out what's going to happen next so that people can make decisions for the future. Journalism is facing rearwards to the past and intelligence is facing forward to the future, which is a major difference. Sometimes we get so caught up with what we think is just political commentary because we're so oversaturated with that sort of thing most of the time from the mainstream media, but in reality what we want to do is help provide information and that dreaded opinion to help make decisions. In the professional world, intelligence analysts are almost never asked by their bosses for source material or raw information. That just That just never happens. Decision makers want purely their opinion on what to do or what is going to happen next. But it's also a constantly evolving process that requires a solid bedrock of communications infrastructure to even work. Of course, in the civilian world expectations are radically different and no analysis will be accepted without first providing the raw source material. That's just kind of where we're at right now, I think. Opinions and organic thought is just not really allowed in nearly all cases unless a primary source is provided. And to do all of this, we need an ecosystem for exchanging that information that is very resilient and hard for malign actors to take offline. When it comes to having that forward-facing ecosystem, we need to have capabilities to help make decisions even when everything is failing around us. Nobody would expect a Fox News anchor to take off their suit and tie, fire up a ham radio, and transmit a report from the field. Nobody would expect an ambulance driver to be the same guy who builds that ambulance in the factory or fixes it when it breaks down. But for the prepared citizen, that might be an expectation for us because we're not moving information to improve ratings, but rather to save lives sometimes. In our world, he who has the information or analysis has the responsibility to ensure that it can make it into the hands of whomever needs it. In our case, we have to not just be responsible for gathering information and processing it into intelligence, but also providing that analysis in a way that allows others to make decisions. And on top of all of that, we have to make sure that this flow of analysis can take place when all communications networks are down. It's a tall order. It's a hard thing to do, but the Ghost Net is a decent starting point toward building out that ecosystem. And now that there is an Android version of JS8Call, the main software package that we use for this, it is now even easier to become involved and start sharing information. So, this week I did pick up many of your transmissions via this method, and I'm starting to get a little bit more familiar with the Android app of JS8Call. I was able to get it to work with one of my radios, but not the other, unfortunately. Uh and it's going to take a little bit of work around to get a receive-only arrangement working for those of you who don't have any kind of interest in ham radio. If you just want to receive the news via radio, you can still do it. It's just a little bit of work around for the moment. So, just to test this out on Thursday night, I set up one of my phones via audio coupling, as in I literally just laid my headphones on top of my phone's microphone, so that the signals could be transmitted from the speaker in the headphones to the microphone on the phone, and it was decoded that way. So, that did work. A very, very ad hoc way of doing it. Seemed to work decently well enough. That's not That's not normally how you'd want to do it, but it can work. Longer messages did not decode, but again, this is a work in progress, and I hope that we can get this working even better over the next few months. So, please stay tuned for that. I'm going to do a little bit more testing on this and try to get this working a little bit better, so that we can have even better tools to exchange information. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you all for sticking around, and we'll get back at it next week. Thank you again to all of you on Patreon who keep the project going. I really do appreciate it. I could not do any of this without you. So, thank you again, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. Today I thought I would take some time to explain some of the updates to the mapping projects that I'm working on because things have gotten quite expansive. It's become quite a large uh endeavor and there are a few different things that I think might be helpful to explain in this sort of format. I didn't want to bury this in the weekend update this week. So I wanted to have a a dedicated video that I can point people to in the future when they have a question about something like an online map or a data layer or something like that. So, just keep that in mind if you're watching this in the future. This is how things stand as of April 2025. If you're watching this several months or even years in the future, things may be a little bit out of date because this is uh changing rather quickly. This is kind of a developmental thing. So, when developmental things are talked about, things change quite a bit. At the moment, I've got four main lines of effort which are in various stages of completion. The first most obvious one that you guys probably have seen me talk about quite a bit are the online maps. So, I am working mostly within the ArcGIS ecosystem. Now, there's pros and cons to this, which we'll get into in a moment, but right now, this is mostly an onlinebased mapping system. I know not perfect, but it's what I'm going with for now. And this will become apparent as to why in a moment. So, the online maps, I have two of them at the moment. One of them is the main one, the SIP cop main, the common intelligence picture, common operating picture main. Uh, I've just renamed it to being the common intelligence picture. It's the main map that I throw most things on. If there's an event going on around the world, check this map and chances are I will probably be zoomed into it watching it or I will be plotting stuff. This is the working document. This is the main place to be for anything going on around the world. I have an entirely separate map altogether for tracking events or showing data layers pertaining to the border crisis. So the United States Mexico border crisis. I have been working on this for a while. And the reason that I have this on a completely separate map altogether is because the the types of data layers that I'm going to need to display on that map are going to be very different than what I'm going to display on the main uh map. So, since these are online maps and they're very very heavy on the RAM usage by a computer, it's really best to keep things as as simple as possible and to keep, you know, tens of thousands of points off of maps if if if you can help it. So, the border crisis map is going to have a lot of imagery overlays. is going to have a lot of random points, a lot of layers that I can bring in from other people and it's it's going to be worthy of its own separate map. So that's why I have things arranged that way. If something else goes on around the world, I already have templates already kind of in my, you know, hidden in in my folders so that I can activate a special map for a special region just in case things start popping off in a very significant way around the planet that would require me to have a separate map for that. The other main project I have is what I'm calling the dashboard. Now, ArcJS calls this experiences. It's their marketing term for essentially a dashboard. The reason that it's a little bit confusing is because ArcGIS actually has a separate feature called the dashboard feature, but it really sucks. It's not helpful. So, the experiences is kind of the way to refresh that. And essentially what it is is a way of for me to display a lot of different stuff in a dashboard format. So, I can display the main uh map. I can bring in the border crisis map. So I kind of leave that. I can display two maps at the same time. I can show multiple of the same map but zoomed into different areas of the planet. So uh for instance I just kind of tend to zoom into places which are a little bit you know more helpful. Something's going on someplace I can zoom in but it's all displaying the same map. I can also display things like maps and charts. I can bring in my Obsidian notes. Uh for those of you who are aware, I all of my wire reports, all of the clickable sources and links for how I put together these uh intelligence reports, all of that is contained within Obsidian, a a sort of third party uh notetaking app. But what I can do is bring that in to the dashboard so that I can display text on the screen and I can update it in real time. So this is something that is I don't know how common it is. cuz I when I was doing this professionally, it wasn't very common at all. But it probably should be more common for I guess uh more professional intelligence groups to have this kind of architecture for arranging how their talk is laid out, their tactical operations center. Right? So essentially what you want to have in your office uh if you're so inclined or you're interested in this kind of thing is you can dedicate an entire monitor to this. So, I created this map dashboard solely for that reason, so that you can throw this uh web page up on a monitor if you've got a spare monitor. You can even throw it up on a projector and just use that. But it's kind of a one-stop shop place where you can someone can walk in, look at this for 30 seconds, and understand what's going on around the world. So, that's kind of the way uh that that works uh with the dashboard. Now, the cons with the dashboard is that it pulls a lot a lot of memory from your web browser. So, chances are if you're running the dashboard, at least for me, I mean, my computer's not that bad. But generally speaking, if I've got the dashboard up, I can't really run anything else in that browser. So, I don't know, your experience may vary, but that's kind of the way uh I use it at the moment is just kind of having a one-stop shop, one screen look at look at the screen to see what's going on around the world. The next line of effort is what I'm calling the Nexus. Now, this is something new. I have not announced this, so this is the first time you're probably hearing about this. So this is essentially ArcGIS has in their ecosystem a very primitive and very simple website builder. So this is what this is. This is what I'm calling the S2 underground nexus. It's just a website template, but it's it's a little bit different than a normal website in that I can bring in a lot of other things inside the ArcGIS ecosystem such as maps. I can show my online map on the web page. I can bring in YouTube tutorials. I can bring in uh other things such as surveys. So on the Nexus, the Nexus will be the chief spot for filing reports. So yes, I finally have not just one but a series of tip lines that you can go in and file a report on. So if you are interested in submitting information, the Nexus here, this is going to be the chief spot for sending me information uh about something going on around the planet. And you can see on the Nexus what kinds of reports are there. So I've got multiple ones. I've got a general tip line. I've got things for spotting aircraft and drones and all kinds of stuff, right? So if you're more of a sigant guy, you're more of a radio nerd and you start picking up hostile radio transmissions, you can go in and there's a special report format for that uh to let me know about these sorts of things. But there's also things like logistical shortages. So, if you go to the grocery store and see that, oh, wow, we're going through another another bout of uh logistical challenges or supply shortages. Remember the COVID years where everything was out of stock or something like that and I was tracking all these logistical shortages around the country? Well, now there's a better way for doing that. You can even scan the barcode of uh items uh just using your phone and report it to me that ah this this item is out of stock. So, I don't know how much use these are going to get right now. I'll talk about that in a moment. But right now, this is kind of the the ecosystem that I'm setting up. Now, again, this may be a gigantic failure. I have no idea. I would be willing to bet that probably 90% of what people submit is not going to be helpful or or usable, but we're going to give it a try, right? So, I've got these tools available to me, so I might as well use them. So, we'll give it a shot. And finally, all of this data, literally every bit of it, is available as a layer. So all of the things that are going to populate on the on the the online maps like the common intelligence picture or some of the stuff on the dashboard too, the online map that you guys see is just the way of visualizing that information. But really if you look down deep, it's really just a spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet has to be created by somebody, right? And that somebody's me in this case. So I'm creating a lot of feature layers that can be used and brought into other projects. So if someone has more of a uh let's just say you're working for a disaster relief group, right? and uh or even even an official group, right? You're like the Red Cross or something and you use ArcGIS in your disaster management system. Well, what that agency can do is if they have ArcGIS access, which most most of them do, you can just add my layers in and it will automatically update on their own internal maps. So, there's no telling where this data goes. As far as I know, the ArcJS uh system doesn't really have a way of uh telling who's using my layers. So, I don't have any analytics at all on any of this stuff. Uh, the only thing that I can see is how many people click on the SIP cop map. That's really it. It's just a total it's just a view counter. Uh, but other than that, I can't really see where this data is going. So, something to be mindful of, which I'll talk about in a moment. But yeah, all of this data is available for anyone who needs to use it, the raw data that is. And since it's available as a feature layer on ArcGIS online, this means that a lot of third-party tools, uh, a lot of thirdparty software packages that can pull from ArcGIS now have access to that data. So, I'm going to have to be a little bit vague on this for now because I'm aware of a few software packages that are still in development that are going to be able to pull from ArcJS online. And yeah, that'll be very, very helpful in the future. But, but for now, it's still kind of developmental. The bottom line is that even though this is underwhelming, you know, you're creating layers, so what, right? Well, it's going to be helpful later on. You would be really, really surprised to find out how hard it is to have a mapping solution where I can put a dot on a map and put a label on that dot and then share it with the world. That is really incredibly hard to do. So, so hard that uh there really aren't that many commercial solutions for it. And the ones that do exist, they don't fulfill all the requirements that we may need for say the backup data or you know uploading images or providing the sourcing for a report or something like that. This whole ArcGIS ecosystem, despite how infuriating it is, despite all the downsides, the ArcJIS ecosystem is still the best way I found for visualizing stuff like this in a more complicated way uh than than you might think. So those are the four main lines of effort that I'm working on right now. Let's go through and very briefly show you an example of what all four of these uh things look like from the end user's perspective. All right, so starting off with the common intelligence picture. This is of course the main uh bread and butter of this whole project. This is the main map that I'm using for most things. Many of you have been playing with this on your own and know how things work, but there are also a lot of features that are not entirely obvious at at face value. So, one of the first things is when you load this map in, you will see it probably zoomed in to to my view. Whenever I am working on the map and I save the map uh after loading something in or changing something, it will save it at the view that I looked at. So, for instance, today I'm I'm working on the uh wildfires in New Jersey. As you can see here, it's zoomed into New Jersey and I also have turned on a couple of layers that that might not be helpful for you. You can change that on your end, however. So, uh, for instance, let's just say you're not interested in New Jersey. You're you're trying to track some other crisis or you're looking around the around the United States or even around the world and the map gets a little bit busy. As you can see here, I have wildfire uh detection services turned on. Uh, and let's just say you don't want that. Well, you can turn that off very easily. Just go over to the layers tab, go into base data here, fire data, and you can turn it all off. Uh this is something you can do on your end. It's easy. Uh you could even turn on various things. So say you don't want the modus data, the the automatic satellite fire detection stuff and you just want the pucks from the national u wildfire agencies that plug into this. Well, here are just the wildfires, right? And if you don't want any of that, you can turn it all off. So something helpful for those of you who just want to visualize certain kinds of data. Another thing that's not entirely obvious is that these icons here, at least uh the icons that I load on on my layers, uh these are clickable. So you can actually click these layers and you will find a lot of data. So let's just say for instance, we click this icon here. We can see that it is indeed a vandalism uh incident. This is one of the Tesla attacks I suppose. And it's got the street address, the attack motive. So again, it's showing you the data that I am loading in on my end. And you can actually have clickable links to the sources for this information. So again, this is uh some of the raw uh data that you will see uh from your end. Not a lot of places do that. Not a lot of places want to share their sources and and I understand why, but if we're going to have a more holistic data driven approach, you know, we've got to have things like clickable links so that people can actually see that we're not making things up, right? And you know, we've got uh stuff like this which is very very helpful I think. So another thing that might not be very obvious, especially on mobile devices. So if you're using a smartphone to view this map, you can, but it it's not obvious that you can do this. You can select different layers and then apply filters. So for instance, I've got everything turned off here uh except for the kinetic activity tracker, the total database. So I've got that loaded in as a layer. Now, you can see here that I've got it loaded in multiple times to show the past seven days of activity and the past uh 30 days of activity. I just have that so that you can easily click on and off uh certain things. So, if you just want to see what happened in the past week, you can do that with just a single click. But really, I shouldn't have to do this because you can apply filters. So, let me show you what that looks like. So, all you have to do is click the layer here so that it's bolded and it will bring up generally the properties tab. Well, now you've got a bunch of tools here on the side that you can use to manipulate this data. So, let's go to filters and let's add a new filter. And let's say I want to only see uh the incidents that are arson. Let's see. I just want to look at arson events over the p over the whole database, right? So, uh I can just add a filter where attack type is arson. And look at that. Just arson attacks. So that's how you apply filters and you can actually get pretty crazy with this. Once this data set gets really really big and we start working with, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of points on the map. Uh these filters are going to be a little bit more helpful. So let's just add a new one here. Let's go back. Let's add Okay, attack type is vandalism. Well, let's change that to let's see here. Well, vandalism is the biggest one right now. So let's just use that because I think it'll be a little bit more illustrative. And let's add another uh condition as well. So now what we're going to do is filter this map by attack attack types that are vandalism. So vandalism attacks and let's change it by date and let's say in the last let's say 8 weeks. So there we go. Uh now we're only seeing the vandalism attacks that have taken place in the past 8 weeks. So that's a pretty helpful way of of visualizing data if you're trying to do a little bit of data analysis. Now again, you can save this, but that's where RJS gets you. So, uh, they're going to they're going to want their subscription based off of that. So, um, you know, it's not going to be very very easy to do. It's going to save in your browser, but if you wanted to export that data somewhere, well, that's going to be a little bit harder to to get this data off of this map. But while you're viewing it, while you're using it, it's it's free. it's you don't even need to log in or anything. So, just something to to kind of keep in mind. One of the other things that you can do if you are so inclined is add more data. So, say uh you find somebody else who's got a better data set or something different, something you else you wanted to add. So, say like population demographics. I don't have that on my maps, but let's just say you wanted to do that. So, you can come in here and add a layer. Give it a second to populate. Uh you've got a couple of choices here. Living Atlas and ArcJS online. Living Atlas is uh the older format if I'm not mistaken. ARGS online is kind of the newer thing, but let's just see uh what we have here. Let's see. Well, we've got a couple of EZRI layers here for US Census populated place areas. Seems like a relatively new thing. It's it's authoritative and it's by EZRI. So, it's by the parent company for all of this. Well, now that's going to freeze my map, I think. But, uh, let's just zoom in here to a populated area like say Baltimore. And yeah, so there we go. We've got a a completely different layer that's now added to our map. And again, we can sort that if we so choose. So again, it should be clickable and it'll tell you the population of certain areas. So that may be helpful for you. Uh, it may be very useful over time. I don't know. Uh, but you can definitely add in other data. Now, of course, when you refresh the page, all these changes go away. So, uh it just goes back to the standard default. And that's the way this works with ARGS. If you want to save it to your own system, you're going to have to shell out for a very expensive subscription. So, again, I'm trying to make this as easy as possible for people who are just they don't want to log in. You don't want to pay for the service, but you want to have something uh to manipulate some data with. Well, you've got it with these online maps. So, let's jump over to the SIP COP dashboard, the uh dashboard product I've got going. And as you can see, it's a pretty heavy lifting product here. It takes a while to load and it it may uh stress your your computer if you're trying to run this on a laptop or something. Uh you know, good luck. I don't know. Um but it it may or may not load. But anyway, this is the dashboard product. And as you can see here, the reason that it takes so long to load is because it's loading four separate maps or however many maps that I want to put on it, uh, and all of these background projects. So, so say you don't really care about a certain area that I care about and I'm trying to track and do things, well, you could just expand it and and not worry about it so much. So, uh, the the really the world's your oyster here. You can do all kinds of stuff. Say you don't really care about my charts and data. Well, you can just drag it down and make it disappear. Uh likewise uh you can also since this is embedded in in most of the dashboards that I'm going to be using uh you can also access all of my Obsidian notes. So I think that's pretty helpful. So say you want a wire report uh you want to read the wire report in the actual map itself. You can um the default is obviously uh going to be set to the uh situation report. So, if there's some kind of situp that needs to happen, if I need to have text on screen to show a readable summary of what's going on or what's happened so far, I can do that. I know that the dashboard here, this dashboard product fills a really, really niche role. Like, most people probably are not going to use this, but it's there. Uh, I can change the default zoom level so that if we've got multiple crises going on around the planet or around the country or in an area. I don't have to constantly move around and zoom and uh, you know, save the zoom level and I don't have to do any of that. I can just zoom to a specific area. This this main one here that I've got in the upper right hand corner here, this is just a zip cop main and these other two are the same map. So, it's literally the exact same map loaded three times. I've just got to zoom to different areas. So, uh, as the default, this will change. Every crisis is different, right? So, every crisis needs different data loaded. As many of you know, during, uh, some of the aircraft crashes, I was using these two panels down here uh, for live streams. So, I can actually live stream news media coverage. If there's like a YouTube live stream or something, I can put that here on the map. I don't have to just show map data. Similar story with other data. So, I can put in charts and all kinds of data analysis tools based off of the layers of what's populating on these maps. I know it's super nerdy and it's not going to be helpful for everyone, but some situations it might be pretty helpful. And while there's, you know, no crisis going on that I need to track, you know, right now, I mean, there's always a crisis, right? But if there's some kind of major geopolitical situation going on, I can configure this dashboard to be the most helpful for someone to look at it and see what's going on. So, and finally, we have the Nexus. Uh, this is again ArcJS's primitive website builder. It's not pretty. I will admit I'll make improvements on that over time, but right now, again, we're we're working with a working product here. So, I have needed a general tip line for a very long period of time, but I have been very hesitant to implement such for a variety of reasons. So, hopefully this goes well. Okay. So, if you have something to send to me, you can use this general tip line. I'll just walk through it right quick. You click the tab, it opens up in a new tab. You can do this, of course, all on your phone. It's a little bit buggy on phones right now, but I'm I'm working on it. So, just just give me a minute. Uh it's it's going to take a little bit to uh get things kind of ironed out. But here's what it looks like on the internet, right, on a web browser. And you can see it's a pretty simple thing. You can just put uh the date and time something happens. You'd be surprised uh the the number of people who do not uh know what to report. They will a lot of people and and they're good naturatured. They're they're very well-meaning. But a lot of times, I would say 95% of the time when somebody gives me a tip about something or they send something to me, I can't do anything with it because usually there's critical data missing. Date and time, that's the basics, right? When did this occur? Um, that's a very, very critical step. Another critical step is the location. And as you can see here, I have a map actually embedded in the survey here. So, you can do one of two things. uh you can either uh click the map and it will try to suck your GPS coordinate in. But for the data uh conscious, you don't have to worry about that. Uh for for the people who don't want me to know where you're at or where the location the incident is taking place, uh don't worry about it. You don't need to to do that. You can just click the map. So you just click it. Random spot in Missouri. There you go. Uh and that will give me the lat and long of where the incident takes place. The reason that I have this location data enabled is for people who are say on the street, they witness something they and they don't know where they are. Uh but they can tap the map to get their current location right. So it's not necessary. I don't want to know where uh people are sending reports from. I I just really just need to know the incident where the incident is taking place. Uh because you'd be surprised how long it takes me to figure out where something is taking place. So again, don't worry about it too much if you you share as much data as you want. The the data is just coming to me. So obviously, if you're just sending me a link of something you saw on Twitter, please do not use your own location. I don't want to know where your couch is sitting in your living room. I don't care. Uh and I should not have that information anyway. But again, the location of where the incident is taking place is critical. Uh because well, I just need to know where things happen. Otherwise, I can't put it on the map, right? Likewise, I need to know if this is legit. So, if somebody sees something or there's some kind of uh crisis or something and there's no evidence of it or there's no like amplifying information, I can't do much with it. So, I have a spot here to upload media. There is a file size limit, so please don't drop a 12-hour documentary to me. But, yeah, we'll see how we'll see how much abuse that gets. I may have to shut that down pretty quickly. Who knows? And then also contact information. Notice that it is not required. You can submit this totally anonymously. Uh yeah, I don't care. Anons run the internet, right? So if you want to put your email address, a burner email address is perfectly fine. I don't care. It would just be really nice if you're submitting something that you know is not going to get a lot of media coverage and you like have firsthand information of something. It would be really helpful to have your contact information so I can reach out if necessary to get some more amplifying information. Uh because again I fully expect all of these reports to be abused quite thoroughly by malign actors, by spammers, you name it, right? So I fully expect a lot of false information to to be put into these forms. So I'm going to have to filter this quite a bit on my end. But coming back to the other forms, you can go and check them out on your own. Really, you can kind of see where I'm going with this. I'm frontloading effort. I don't expect hardly anyone to go to the grocery store and tell me when they don't have a can of beans on the shelf. But if there are major logistical shortages, again, like during the COVID years, I have a survey. I have a report format already there. So again, if we just open up the logistical shortages one, it's different. It's these are not all the same uh form uh that I need different information. So again, the date of when something occurs, the store name, and the good experiencing shortage. You can even scan uh barcodes with this. I don't know how well that feature is going to work. I guess we'll see. But either way, all of these reports are different. Same thing if you're a SIG nerd. Um we're trying to get ahead of the game with regards to things like jamming and signals interference. As we all know from the Ukrainian war, signals are important and it's going to be a little bit more of a problem as time goes on. For instance, even with my own ghost net, my own highfrequency radio network, I've experienced deliberate jamming. We don't necessarily have to wait for the war in Ukraine to kind of come to our modern society for these things to start existing already. So again, this is just a standard sort of military like uh signals intelligence interference report, right? And of course, it's very very different. It's it's just something that might be helpful. Of course, this is not linked to the FCC in any way. I'm just some guy on the internet, so this is just helping me out to figure out uh where jamming incidents are occurring. I don't think this is going to get too much use, but who knows if you I would assume that most of these is going to come from Ghostnet users who uh want to tell me that they got jammed during the net. So that was that's probably my guess as to where most of this use is going to come from. But again, there are plenty of others. This one, for instance, the report a drone sighting. This is solely in response to the New Jersey drone crisis from a while back. As you remember, nobody really set up a succinct, you know, processed master database for all of the drone reports. It's just people who were plotting what they saw on Twitter. There was no one place for people to report a drone sighting to people like me who were going to plot it on a map. Right? So again, if we have another hysterical case of drone sightings going on around the country, well, look, I've already got the form for that. So again, that's kind of the way things stand for now. Uh also on this Nexus tab, you can see some of the other products. You can click uh clickable links for the different different maps. I've got YouTube tutorials. My ghost notes are here as well. So again, it's just kind of a central hub, a nexus, right, for a lot of the data that I'm using geospatial products for. So I know that that is a lot of information to take in at the moment. It's it's quite a lot to to kind of start implementing now. But if you'll just give me a few more moments, let's cover the issues and improvements. So as you might imagine, there are some significant downsides to this whole line of effort that I'm doing. And one of the major problems with this is decentralization, or rather the lack of it. This is purely a centralized effort. All of the report formats, if you were to submit something, it's just going to come to me. Literally nobody else. Just me. All of the mapping stuff, all of these data layers, all of these online maps, it's all being managed by just me, right? And being a single point of failure is not good uh to me. I I don't like that. Now, of course, this is my work, right? So, it's going to have to have a level of single point of failure for now, but once it starts getting into more widespread use, I hope that this data at least can be used by other people. Of course, security concerns are very real uh these days. So, you know, if something happens to me, uh this whole project is going to die on the vine because not really anybody else can contribute to it. Nobody else can manage these things. Now, the data will hopefully be there as long as my account's there. But again, it's a single point of failure, and I don't like that. So, I would much rather have the ability for someone to, you know, ever so often do a pull uh pull all of my data and store it locally if they want to use it so they can build on it later on. ArcJS makes this relatively easy if you're in their ecosystem, but it's very expensive. It's not free. It's not it's not easy uh either to get involved with ARJS's ecosystem. So, you know, it's a hard thing to do. So, something I'm going to be working on in due time. I don't know how effective it's going to be, but I'm going to try to make this a little bit more decentralized because I just don't like being a single point of failure. Sort of along the same lines are the end user considerations. Again, this data is not very easy to use sometimes if you want to just use the raw data. So, I know that it is not uh the easiest thing to work with in the world and that is a problem. Now, ArcGIS, Ezri, really the parent company has made progress by leaps and bounds over the past few years to make GIS something that normal human beings can understand to some degree. Of course, that's a very loaded statement because this is some of the most complex stuff you could possibly do. Uh, it's not easy to do. There are whole professions, whole careers built around people understanding GIS. It's one of those things that if you understand it, you can potentially make a lot of money at it. But not a lot of people want to go through the effort of spending years and years and years of their life learning how to use this one software program. So either way, for the end user, that just means that it's hard to use, and that that's not good. So I'm working on making it a little bit easier for people who want to use this data, and they don't have to go through the mumbo jumbo of working through some of these really complicated ways of visualizing this data like I have to do on my end. sort of in the same vein as symbology. I know that the symbols are very confusing sometimes on the map. You may be wondering why am I using the certain symbols that I'm using. Well, for those of you who look at this map and don't understand what these symbols are. These are military standard 2525 symbols. So, these are a military format. And the reason that I'm using that is because it's a common standard. the entirety of NATO, most of the world uh uses this symbology in a more of a in more of a wartime setting for wartime mapping, uh things like that. I have found that it is the best way of using symbology on a map. Even though it's not very intuitive, I think it's the best way of visualizing this type of data on a map. If I were to start mapping say logistical problems and things like that, I'll use different symbols. But for say the kinetic activity tracker uh that data layer that that feature class there are symbols for all of these things. So I think using a common format is probably the way to go. Not only because it's a common format and my own symbols probably won't mean very much. They mean something to me but they may not mean something to you. Not only because of that but also because it's probably a very good idea to start learning what these symbols are. For instance the two I have here on the screen the blue rectangle. You know, blue rectangles are a friendly unit. Red diamonds are a an enemy unit or an adversary unit. So, in this case, you're looking at a friendly helicopter landing zone or HLZ. And uh the enemy one is an enemy light infantry unit. So, again, all of these things mean something. It's going to take time to learn what they are. But I think that by putting them in my mapping products, it will be helpful for the general public or the the more prepared public, right? The more the more informed citizen, right, to start understanding what these symbols are as best we can, right? I think it'll be very helpful in the future. So that's what I'm I'm doing with that. But again, when it comes to the enduser considerations, bringing this data in is going to be very helpful. Using it offline is going to be helpful. I know these are off these are online maps right now, right? How how helpful is that in the field? Well, it's not. Now, this was very helpful during the Los Angeles wildfires uh few weeks ago, couple months ago now. And because cellular traffic did not go down, so you've got this crisis where people need to know where to go. They need to know where the fire is located and a live updating map if you have cell service is really, really great. Now, obviously, if you don't have cell service, it's useless. But we're working on it. I'm working on offline uh ways of of manipulating and storing this data. So, one of the main ways that we can do this is by integrating with other products. And one of the bigger ones that I'm sure many of you are asking about is ATAC. Can my data be integrated into ATAC? The answer is yes and no. In classic fashion, many of you may not be aware, but there is an ATAC plugin for ArcGIS, but it's not available to the public. It's only available to the government. So, if you are a government user of ATAC, yeah, it's easy. You just add the plugin and you can pull in my data layers and see everything that I have put on the map on a tech. Really handy. But for the rest of us plebs and taxpayers, it's not possible. Uh at least not with that plugin. What you have to do is a lot of workaround. You have to export this data uh from the you have to export each layer. It's not easy. I can tell you it's not. It's possible, but it's not easy. So I think that the workaround for now is for me to generate if something goes down for me to generate KMZs that you can download and integrate into ATAC. That's just a a file format that's that's more readily common. It's usable with Google Earth and ATAC. And I think that's probably how I'm going to do it. But give me some time. I I got to work on this a little bit more because right now there's no real one-click way of integrating this data into ATAC that's easy for people to do on their end. Um it's possible. There's workarounds. It's just not easy. So, give me some time on that. Another thing I'm working on is automation. I'm trying to streamline the process to make things a little bit easier for me to do on my end. Now, this is a touchy subject because, well, I want to automate things to make things as easier for me and for you as possible, but at the same time, I don't want to just be a simple aggregator of data. And what I mean by that is you may not you're you're not going to see it on your end, but on my end, say these drone reports, say you go in and you file a drone report and you give me the location, you give me all the data that I need, and you click submit. Okay, cool. Well, on my end, I have the ability to turn on a layer which allows that survey response, that report response to autopop populate on the map without me checking it at all. You know, I can do that. Uh, but you guys might understand how that's a little bit dangerous to be doing. So, I don't want to do that so much. So really when you click submit it just comes into my dashboard and I have to go through and manually look at each specific report, figure out what it means and then generate my own puck on the map if I think that it is worthy of putting on the map. You can see how this brings in a lot of subjectivity, right? So now we're starting to add a person in between the raw data and what's displayed to the public. Again, this is 2025. Working on the internet is just not possible without doing that to some degree if you want to have a quality product. So there's going to have to be some interpretation. One of the things that you know may be a problem is say you've got a let's just take the drone example for instance. Somebody a drone flies over Newark again and I've got 200 reports of the same exact drone. Well, does that mean that I have 200 drones? No. It means that I have one drone that was seen by 200 people that filed 200 reports. We don't need 200 pucks on the map. Again, a lot of these uh things are going to have to be interpreted by a person. They're going to have to be processed by a person, in this case me, and that's going to bring in subjectivity. A lot of you are going to submit things that I don't think is worth putting on the map or it doesn't really fit with what I'm trying to do with the map. And, you know, people might get upset about that. A lot of people are going to post spam or fake information and I'm going to have to go through and verify all of this stuff, right? Just because somebody reports something doesn't mean it's true. So, there's going to have to be a lot of background work on my end. These report formats are just to make it easier on me. Uh so I don't have to ask questions. I don't have to go back and forth and I don't have to spend hours digging uh because somebody just sent me a tweet or retweet or tagged me in something on Twitter with no context, right? But again, there's always this battle between automation of the raw data to help me out and also trying to reduce the subjectivity on my end, but also keep a lot of subjectivity in there so that you're getting a quality product. Because I tell you, if I just open this up to the internet, well, one, that's that's a very bad idea. But if I were to allow all of the reports to just autopop populate on the map like I can do, you know, you're not going to get uh the best information. So, there's going to be a lot of processing that goes on on my end that is is going to be again a single point of failure until I figure out a better solution. And all of that just kind of leads to what this whole thing is about. I know I've talked a long time today about this, but really I'm just trying to convey to you what I am trying to frontload and what I'm trying to work on for later. Most of this stuff is not going to be helpful now. I honestly don't know if it will ever be helpful. I'm hoping that it will be, but right now I'm just getting the effort, the work, the templates, all this stuff done on my end so that when a crisis happens around the world, we can easily display the data that is helpful for people in need. That's really what this whole thing is about, to streamline this process, make it easy, because I tell you, you know, trying to go through an ARJIS tutorial that's 4 hours long during the middle of a a minute-by-minute crisis, that's not the time for that sort of thing. If I have a bug or I have to have a problem within this on my end with regards to my learning of ArcGIS, the time to learn is now, right? Similar situation for you guys on your end. The time to learn how to use these mapping tools is now, not during a crisis. Because I can tell you if I were to, you know, just say, you know, Xe event occurs, go in there for all of you, hop into the Nexus and start pushing me information if you've got it. Nobody would know what that means without this video to explain, right? If I were to say, hey, look, dashboard is up. I've got the SIP cop updated as well. Nobody knows what that means unless I've explained it beforehand. So really, this is just kind of a front-loading of the effort so that if something important happens around the planet, we can more easily understand what's going on and it's kind of, you know, bringing bringing the team together, right? So hopefully this has been helpful for many of you. I know this is very longwinded way to talk about online maps. Can you think of anything more boring? I I know, right? It's it's not the most entertaining stuff, but this is the kind of thing that wins wars and saves lives. Uh I know that it it may not seem like it, but it does. Now, of course, we don't want to say this is the best thing since sliced bread, right? But this is some of the more boring things that we have to work through that are going to build the infrastructure for uh cooler stuff later on. Many of you can probably read between the lines on some of the stuff I've said today and some of the stuff I've covered and you can maybe uh see where I'm going about, you know, ways of of using this information in the future, other things we can bring in, other ways of automating things. So, I I'll leave that for a future update. But for now, this is the way things stand and it is, I think, a pretty good start. So, thank you all of you who have stuck with me through this and I'm really excited to see where this goes. I really do appreciate it. And again, a special thank you to all of you on Patreon who have supported me through this uh endeavor and getting this thing going. I I know that it's uh not the most entertaining thing sometimes, but I really do appreciate this because in due time, this is going to be uh one piece of the puzzle that is going to help out some of the other projects we're working on. Right? As you can see, maybe we can tie in a lot of the stuff we've already built. Maybe tie in the ghost net a little bit more. You see where we're kind of going with this? All of it will become a little bit more clear in due time as as we can get more organized and and get some of this uh uh workload out the door. So, I would not have been able to do this at all without your support on Patreon. So, thank you so much for that. So, that's all I have for today. I know I've talked way too long already, but thank you guys all again for watching, and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for July 5th through the 11th, 2026. It's been a busy week as usual, so let's get right to it. Around the world this week, the two main wars that we've been watching for a couple of years now have flared back up with several very serious developments taking place in Europe and the Middle East this week. In Africa, the Russians are involved in intense fighting against the FLA militants in Mali, which have taken control of most of the north and eastern parts of the country. And even though wars in the Sahel region are quite common, this conflict has really served as a window for showing us how the third world has adapted to the modern battlefield when it comes to the use of drones and warfare. Here a bit closer to the home front, similar concerns are emerging as the summer fighting season this year south of the border has been hosted to a rise in drone attacks between rival cartel factions in Mexico. The more desolate and far-flung regions of the earth are starting to use drones in their mostly tribal conflicts. And as the Russians are finding out in Mali and the cartels are finding out in Mexico, drone warfare is most certainly a major concern that is very, very hard to counter. Within the homeland, important events this week have largely been within the political realm as several security improvement efforts are underway in Washington DC. This has not gotten a lot of press, but it's still interesting to note as this gives us an indication of where a lot of concerns are starting to mount. So, let's go ahead and start right there because the security improvements that have been observed this week are rather interesting in Washington. In short, the White House has demonstrated a growing concern regarding the safety of President Trump over the past few weeks. This came to light most publicly during President Trump's visit to Turkey for the NATO summit a few days ago when the Secret Service had to switch back to the old Air Force One due to an undisclosed security concern. This was kind of a big deal at the time because this was supposed to be the inaugural flight for the new Air Force One platform. Initially, President Trump claims that switching back to the old airframe was due to sending the new Air Force One ahead to show it off at various bases around Europe. But eventually, they let slip that this was actually due to security recommendations by the Secret Service. And despite the assurances from the Secret Service that this was just done for no reason and not tied to any specific threat, the Secret Service never does anything for no reason. And the logistical nightmare involved in switching planes during an international trip is such a hassle that it's more likely than not that the Secret Service got spooked about something and they needed to pull a fast one and play the shell game again. Who knows what it was? Maybe they found a pager on board or maybe it wasn't anything specific and they just got a bad feeling. I don't know about this one. It's kind of interesting, but that's not all we have to work with this week. In Washington DC, there have been major security renovations at the White House ongoing for the past couple of months at least. For one, we have the major ballroom construction project, which has gotten a lot of attention from everybody for a variety of reasons. But if we skip past the assorted screeching to realize that the new ballroom is mostly just a cover for the massive compound that's being built underground, this is very obviously a project to build a massive compound for C2 or command and control purposes. It's not exactly a big secret. You can look at this and see this is very clearly what's going on. And this is also something that's not unique to Trump. This has been in the works for a while. So, the ballroom itself is honestly not that interesting. What is more interesting is the new fencing that's been put up and the various perimeter expansions that have been requested to be made over the past couple of weeks. They've been testing out a bunch of different arrangements, but the general gist of the plans is to expand the White House perimeter a bit more so as to improve the security situation. They're still working on it. Nothing is finalized yet, but the general plan would involve closing a lot of public access spaces. So, that's going to be a delicate thing to balance in terms of allowing tourists to still get selfies while preventing small arms attacks. In addition to the fencing, the White House is also conducting security upgrades on the North Portico, which began yesterday. Once again, sources differ on why this construction project is going on. Some sources claim it's restoration work. Others claimed that this was a security breach or something to do with the Secret Service requesting a change to the building in some way. I don't know. There's very little information on this. Of course, the Secret Service is not going to comment on anything like this. And there are a lot of renovations being undertaken all over the White House now. So, it's hard to determine which ones are standard restoration work kind of projects and which construction projects are actually security upgrades. Once again, this is kind of early on in the process and there's not a whole lot to sink our teeth into. I've just been noting this over the past couple of weeks and I haven't really had a lot of time to talk about it. A lot of those can of course get dismissed very easily by saying of course the Secret Service is concerned with the threats to the president because he's lived through at least four different assassination attempts depending on how we're counting them. But at least three of those attacks were actually really close calls. The Butler shooting, the Trump International Golf Club shooting, and the Hinckley Hilton attack just a couple months ago were all too close for comfort. So, it would make sense for the Secret Service to try to be more on the ball than they have been in the past, especially in the context of recent comments by President Trump himself, indicating that he has taken personal contingency plans to conduct strategic strikes on Iran in the event of his assassination. He posted this uh message on Truth Social last night. And well, suffice it to say that the concerns are real uh that a very serious event might take place. Of course, we can't really quantify gut feelings on things most of the time, and that's okay, but it also makes it hard to add weight to decisions that are made. But I did want to mention it because again, it's something that I and many others have noticed over the past uh couple of months, but mostly the past couple of weeks, and the shorter daily reports are not exactly conducive to conveying wild hunches or theories, but I guess I also do that far too often anyway. So anyway, it is interesting though that all of these security upgrades and concerns are coming about at the alleged end of a war when the risk of an Iranian attack would be fairly low, but the risk of somebody else being upset is rather high. Just thinking in terms of the old Columbbo style means, mode of an opportunity right now, who in the whole world would have the means, mode of an opportunity to carry out an attack on the White House or some other important figure and the Iranians get blamed for it? Who could that possibly be? Well, chances are if you're watching this, you're probably uh not going to be fooled by it. But rest assured, most people probably would immediately suspect the Iranians, if anything, happened to President Trump. So either way, no matter what happens, it's interesting to make note of these things. Quiet security upgrades, quiet security practices being enacted. This is most certainly something to be aware of moving forward. And speaking of the war this week, let's transition to the Middle East where things are moving rather quickly once again as contradictory actions are taking place all around the region. Simply put, the United States is both escalating the war, but also deescalating quietly. So, let me explain a bit. As we all know, the war reignited somewhat earlier this week with dozens of strikes taking place throughout Iran. I'm still consolidating all of the geoloccation efforts from the past few days, but it looks like most of the targets were along the coastline in the vicinity of Bucher and Chabahar naval bases at the northwestern and southeastern ends of the coastline of Iran, respectively. Keshum Island was also hit several times over the past couple of days along with the scattering of fast boat bases on the eastern side on the eastern coast of the straight of Hormuz. Continuing the trend, a lot of the rhetoric has been contradictory and confusing. So, we just kind of have to let that sit for this week. But what is a lot more clear and a lot more easily verifiable are the strategic moves that have been made. Namely, that the United States is drawing down forces in the Middle East, at least when it comes to aircraft. The B-52s, which were stationed in England, or at least most of them that were stationed in England, have already come back home. And by my account, a couple of flights of F-15s have also departed. And the F-22s that the US had stationed at Ovda Air Base in Israel, they also departed yesterday. So, a lot of aviation is heading back home to the US or back to their normal bases in Europe. What is not changing is the US Navy's posture. The Bush and Lincoln carrier strike groups are still on station in the Middle East and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group or ARG has moved back on station after having uh to divert back to port for some repairs a couple of weeks ago. But in terms of potential ground troops, these guys have already been on the station since the war started really now. All of that being said, what has surged into the region that is new is mostly a lot of bombs and missiles. When the ceasefire was announced, then that time frame between the ceasefire being announced and theou being signed, the United States surged a lot of cargo flights into the region. C7s, C5s, standard military cargo flights. Of course, we can't confirm or figure out what's on these military cargo flights. It's not like they're going to publish their cargo on the internet for us to see, but we can guess that this was probably a huge resupply effort to restock and rearm while they could be relatively sure that they would not get targeted on the tarmac. Though another clue that things are very interesting on the strategic front is that the US has begun to stage a lot of tankers at Aludit Air Base in Qatar. As you guys probably remember, if you've been following this war for 5 months of your life now, you will remember that this air base was evacuated early on because the Iranians started hitting it right during the early stages of the war. The United States figured out that it was probably not a super great idea to have a bunch of very expensive refueling tankers on the ground within very close range of the Iranian missile systems. So, the United States emptied this base out over a period of a couple of weeks. This also happened during Operation Midnight Hammer last year. This is how we were able to be decently sure that those strikes were going to go ahead because by the time the last plane left Aluded, well, guess what? The bombs were just a couple of days after that. So, this base is a good a good indicator. I'm sure the DoD knows what they're doing. They know that they can be seen and they're moving a lot of these tankers back into Alud air base. Lot of very very valuable targets on the ground within range of the Iranian missile systems. Now, I don't know if they're doing this because they're stupid and they're just gambling that the Iranians won't hit it. I mean, it's not like they haven't done that before already. That's why we lost an Awax uh during the height of the war. We parked it at an air base. We didn't think the Iranians would have the guts to hit. And surprise, surprise, they actually did. So, I don't know what's going on with this, but generally speaking, if you're seeing a lot of aircraft being staged at IUD, that just means that's where they're normally stationed. And it's a pretty good indicator that the Pentagon doesn't think they're going to get hit there. And if they think they're not going to get hit there, that probably means the Pentagon is not planning any major offensive. At least so the logic goes, if that makes any sense at all. So again, to recap, we have a very strong discrepancy between the rhetoric and the targeting and what's being moved around. The US is moving and has already moved a lot of aircraft out of the Middle East entirely. And the aircraft that remain in the region are now back at the bases where they were struck at during the height of the war. And yet the targeting flared up earlier this week. So, I don't know what's going on. Um, in terms of how this affects us here at home, the energy crisis really mostly just continues. It's like nothing has changed because the straight of Hormuz has only seen very tepid traffic since theou was signed. And now that the ceasefire is officially over, this is President Trump's own words. The ceasefire is over. We're basically back to where things were before the ceasefire was originally announced. So, back to technically a state of war. And as we end the 19th week of the war, we're on week 19 now. Peace does not appear to be a viable option for the time being. So, not a whole lot of closure. It's very much a state of limbo and I think we're going to probably be there for a while. Continuing the trend of wars flaring back up again. The war in Ukraine has begun to spill outside the main conflict zone. So, let's go over to Europe and discuss that conflict. There has not been much media focus on Europe this week. However, the war in Ukraine is beginning to be quite concerning at this point. On the Russian side, the Russians have been consolidating gains in the vicinity of Costantinovka with most reports agreeing at this point that Russia has taken the city for the most part. This was a major objective for Russia to capture and also for Ukraine to defend as it's a comparatively large city in the Donbass, which has been a milestone for a while. Similarly, uh gains are being made up in Sunumi on the northern border. The Russians also continue to slam as many drones and missiles into Odessa as they possibly can with large waves of drone attacks taking place pretty much every night for the past couple of weeks. The Ukrainians are doing the same thing from their side. So, you know, it's kind of a tit fortat sort of thing. And aside from the gains that are being made by the Russians on the Eastern front, the Ukrainian targeting of petroleum sites around Russia within Russia has been the most important factor for stability in Europe. This week, uh, the Ukrainians and the American advisers working with them have continued to strike Russian petroleum infrastructure at many different sites around Russia. Oil refineries and export terminals have been the main target, and many of these places are in extremely remote terrain, which is why it's so hard to geollocate. The Luga oil terminals near St. Petersburg have been hit a few times over the past couple of months, especially over the past couple of weeks. And a few days ago, hit a refinery in Omsk, which is a long way from the front lines. That's an old old school Soviet city and it's a very long way from the fightings. Other than those uh two main attacks, there have also been hundreds of attacks on refineries and fuel storage depots in Moscow. And this week, Ukraine has escalated drone attacks on Russian merchant ships transporting petroleum in the Sea of Az. Once again, the map is misleading. Sorry about that. I'm still trying to catch up. But there have actually been a few dozen attacks on merchant vessels in this general location in the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainians are claiming to have struck 73 vessels in the Sea of Azov over the past week. That's their number and I can't verify it independently but again that's their claim. Regardless of the exact numbers uh this is having an effect in Russia as their supply chain has been disrupted significantly. Fuel shortages have continued throughout the country but how serious this is. It's anybody's guess. It is true that Russians themselves admit there are gasoline and diesel shortages due to the attacks. But the severity of this is up for debate. The Ukrainians of course claim that Russia is on their last legs and it's like Mad Max over there trying to get gas. and the Russians of course claim that this is merely a minor setback that is being addressed. The truth as always is probably somewhere in between. Hitting one refinery is going to disrupt supply somewhere. Uh so you're going to see, you know, footage of long gas lines in various places, but because Russia is so big, it might take a couple of days for another refinery to start shipping oil to those uh more far-flung regions. So again, how bad is this? I don't really know. Either way, regardless of how bad it is, time will tell. I guess the next events to look out for are what Russia is going to do in response. So far, we haven't seen uh an arresting missile slam into the ground in downtown Kiev, but if uh Ukraine keeps this up, I think that's probably going to happen. So, you know, not trying to take sides here, but I think that's probably what's coming down the pipeline. Either way, we shall see how this war develops over the next few weeks. But things are not looking super great in terms of stability throughout Europe. So the Ukrainians and Russians are starting to target each other more significantly and the potential for slowly sleepwalking into a wider conflict remains pretty high. So not super great. It's not the end of the world as always, but something to be aware of even here in the homeland as the United States is substantially invested in the war in Ukraine and the war in Iran. So we've got two major wars that we are either fighting directly or spending a substantial amount of resources on uh kind of keeping going. So, even though it doesn't seem like either of these conflicts affects us, things uh things have a way of catching up to us pretty quickly as the shadow wars around the world keep marching on. And on that note, that's all I have for today. So, let's go ahead and roll things up with the ghost net reports for this week. Again, a fantastic ghost net. It was thunderstorming rather severely uh this week when I was trying to send and receive messages, but that's okay. Still was able to get a lot of uh messages exchanged back and forth, and that's pretty good. On a bit of an administrative note, some of you may have noticed this week I am now hosting my wire reports uh throughout the week on the Nomad Net. And I know I've not explained this just yet or provided a tutorial showing exactly what this is. Uh fear not, it's coming down the pipeline. I'm still getting things organized for the moment, but I'm going to be diving into this a lot more later this year. This project revolves around a communication system that works over the Reticulum network, which is a project that is right up my alley and something I think will be very useful to integrate into the Ghostnet at some point. I'm pretty sure most of you have probably heard of Reticulum before by now, maybe just parenthetically, but just in case you haven't, this is an open- source communications uh ecosystem which allows users to link up in whatever means that they have. If you want to give it a try right now and just kind of copy what I'm doing, you can use any client you want, but right now I'm using Mesh Chat X, which is a client. It's an app you can install on your phone or uh you can download it to your computer and it allows you to access the infrastructure which is Reticulum. It's still a little bit developmental, but I think it works pretty good. And in the spirit of the ghost net, this will be a very good tool for communicating using a variety of different means. You can use Laura devices like meshtastic devices that you buy and flash with mesh meshtastic firmware. You can use ham radios. Uh you can even use a server running on the internet, which is uh kind of what I'm using right now. And it's all going to sync everything up together and allow information to flow across this entire ecosystem. It's not exactly a perfect analogy, but think of this as an app that you have on your phone, which essentially lets us reinvent the internet. Maybe not totally, but the general utility of it. All of it peer-to-peer completely anonymously. And if the entire internet goes down, this will still work via radio. Specifically regarding my work, the wire reports. One thing you can do with Reticulum is host very primitive web pages, kind of like uh the good old days of dialup. But the difference is this can all work over radio. So the same hardware that runs your meshtastic devices. You can do a lot of other cool stuff with it too. You can send files, full-size images, and you can even send voice notes and voice messages through the system. I'm right now using a Halo node that I have set up with this phone out here in the middle of the woods. And it's a pretty cool way of ensuring uh different kinds of communication can be obtained even if you're completely off-rid. I think that's pretty cool. It's like Meshtastic on steroids, but it's a completely different ecosystem and a whole a whole lot heavier than just Meshtastic. So, right now I have my own Nomad Net page up and running connected to the internet. But the general idea is that if one day the internet goes out, the system itself will switch over to radio and we'll still have the same capabilities even during a total apocalyptic scenario. Again, I'm making a whole tutorial on this. So, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, fear not. This is really just for those of you who are interested in the more nerdy kind of radio stuff. All will be made clear in due time. Just like with the ATAC series I'm currently working on, we are rapidly developing a lot of capabilities that help in many different ways, not just in terms of censorship prevention, but also resiliency during natural or man-made disasters. I know it's not exactly an exciting prospect sometimes and the radio stuff is pretty hard to understand and kind of boring, but just think about how you would know what happened if you lost connection to the outside world. Information that goes nowhere is useless. And I myself have been constantly relearning that over the past couple of months. You may not have noticed this, but over the past uh couple of weeks or so, I've been able to research, write, produce, and publish several wire reports while my power was out due to severe storm damage. Hopefully the experience was as seamless as possible, but that's the end goal. Resiliency even during a disaster situation when everything is going wrong. You have a million other things to do and you still need to maintain a link with the outside world so that you can be aware of threats before they get within your area. In my case, I think Reticulum is a pretty good candidate for allowing me to always always always be able to work and provide a wire report or some other kind of report no matter what. I know the end user doesn't really care. uh they just want the information and that's perfectly fine. But I'm getting closer to being able to provide a decently professional product in extremely adverse conditions if need be. If the power goes out, I can still get information to write my report and I can then make sure that that report gets disseminated to other people who might also be in adverse conditions as easily and as seamlessly as possible. And once I get more experience with this sort of thing, once I iron out the details, I can teach you guys how I did it and what I'm doing so that you can replicate everything that I'm doing if you want on your end. Now, maybe we can see the utility of the ghost net. If you have an HF radio and you can send and receive messages on JS8 call, you're about 95% of the way there. There's not really much more to learn. Instead of sending short text messages over JSA call, imagine if you could send photos, short videos and files. You could even maybe potentially even have voice calls. All of this is technically possible to do right now over the ghost net. It's just that the FCC's rules kind of get in the way right now. So, we'll have to work around that somehow and overcome the uh cultural problems within amateur radio. But the general idea is that we are working toward having some serious capabilities very very soon. The ghost net itself is going to stay the same for a long time. I'm not going to make any changes anytime soon, so don't worry about any imminent changes. But this just goes to show what is actually possible. It used to be that if doomsday arrives, in the worst possible case fantasy scenario you can conjure up, doomsday arrives and you go out in your yard and fire up your radio, you'd be able to talk to a few hundred or a few thousand of us who would also do the same and fire up the ghost net and we can exchange information around the world in a textbased format. Well, now at least theoretically, we can send images, send files, even host our own off-grid web pages, which I think is pretty cool. So, with all of that in the pipeline for later on, uh that's all I have for today. Hey, thanks to all of you on Patreon for the support to keep going and sticking with me as I've been trying to figure all this stuff out. I could not have done this without you guys, so I really do appreciate it. And thanks to all of you for watching, and I hope to improve a lot of this resiliency over the next few weeks. So, thanks again, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

it was a clear night when muhammad omar hopped onto the back of a motorcycle with his right-hand man abdulgani baratar his home having been the target of the first ever drone strike in history just a few hours prior mulla omar was officially on the run stealing out from his compound into the brisk night mullah omar was headed for the time being for the safety of the mountains but as the founder of the taliban faded into the darkness his mission was not over yet with his trusty shortwave radio he could issue orders raise morale and proved that the americans had not killed him yet all from his hiding places in the snow-capped peaks of afghanistan shortly after waves of american troops began pouring into the country with his shortwave radio omar ordered taliban fighters to abandon the cities and flee to the hills which were more defendable against airstrikes and raids the afghan insurgency had just begun since the dawn of modern warfare military commanders around the world have known the overwhelming importance of communications whether it be runners signal lamps or flags and pennants armies have relied on long-distance communications to issue orders to their troops with the advent of wireless technology during the first world war that term long distance took new meaning with radio technology commanders could communicate with subordinates or superiors dozens or even hundreds of miles away radically changing the nature of warfare even in our modern times hf or high frequency radio also known as a shortwave radio is still going strong among the world's warlords just a few years ago before he became infamous on the world stage joseph kony the leader of the lord's resistance army a militant guerrilla group infamous throughout uganda for their brutality used hf radio to communicate throughout the african continent at their prime the lra had set up early warning networks widespread networks of outposts and observers that would use small captured hf radio sets to communicate between locations for the lra shortwave radio would also be their downfall as ugandan citizens forming their own counter-insurgency groups would use hf radio to warn neighboring villages of lra presence in the area hf radio is just another tool in the toolbox that people outside of the hobby radio community often overlook and these days we don't want to overlook anything that might help us ensure reliable non-internet-based communications today we find ourselves living in a unique world to say the least clearly the past couple of years have been very enlightening for all of us in years past we haven't had to deal with or even think about certain things but today it's quite clear that even the normal average guy with a 9 to 5 job is observing the world and very quietly entertaining the idea of running to hide in the mountains with nothing but his family and the clothes on his back sure for most of us this is just a fantasy or a dream that we think about occasionally but in our modern world entertaining the idea of fleeing to the hills at any moment is perhaps not a bad thing to plan for even if just temporarily and if we're going to theorize about extreme circumstances that are not really theoretical but nonetheless on our doorstep we might as well do it right so today let's bring these theories and notions out of the realm of fantasy at least with regards to communications and talk about some of the things that can make the motorcycle ride in the dead of night a somewhat survivable option should things take a turn for the worse and to dive deep into hf radio we have to separate ourselves somewhat from the hobby side of amateur radio as many people know the ham radio community has a lot of unique personalities that make it difficult to talk about certain topics such as the ones we're going to discuss today as usual the disclaimers are the longest on the videos talking about radios and today is no exception but like always we will only discuss the fcc and legality when it is pertinent and applicable to the development of the technology itself most of the situations and features we're going to talk about are purely hypothetical emergency situations so it's up to the individual user to read the fcc's rules so without further ado let's talk about some things you need to consider if you want to channel your inner warlord and start thinking about developing your own communications networks over long distances and over rugged terrain and first up is the nature of the emergency itself one of the very first things we must do is be honest with ourselves a significant portion of the ham radio hobby is devoted to off-grid communications which is great whether it's a quick qso during a summit on the air or soda activation or if it's a quick text message sent while camping the concept of off-grid communications is a great way to test a variety of skills however we do have to ask ourselves if the skills we are practicing really have value in our current times ham radio is often touted as a great emergency communication tool in fact it's really the only way to communicate long distances without a pre-existing infrastructure the unspoken idea among many hams is that they can practice their skills by playing by the fcc's rules and using their real call sign and things like that but at the moment a more domestic situation becomes apparent they can metaphorically flip the switch and operate anonymously or in a situation in which they themselves might be hunted we practice this all the time in the ham radio world but we stop short of actually coming out and saying why we're developing these skills and since we always stop short of even verbalizing these things because we're terrified of the fcc we have to be mindful of training mentalities seeping into the real world situations if we never get out of a training mentality we have to wonder if it's even possible to get out of a training mentality can it even be done since emergencies that could improve our radio skills do not happen that often and the emergencies that do happen are almost always related to weather or natural events we are really doing ourselves a disservice by not training to a wartime standard the cuban jamming last year and the communications observations we have made during the war in ukraine have been very enlightening recently and have encouraged many radio operators to re-examine their priorities and what they're actually capable of doing sure it's not exactly feasible to train likely fight with regards to radios sometimes because we are often at odds with the fcc and we have to play by their rules a great example of this is call signs sure we may get to know other people as proper ham radio enthusiasts engaging in the hobby and we might know our friends call signs and their favorite bands and the time of day to operate on but do we know what shall we say alternative call sign they might use in the event that an emergency occurs and they don't want people to know who they are and more importantly if we aren't using our real name in an emergency do we have a pre-established list of who everybody is and what capabilities our local networks have do we practice avoiding jamming truly going by the radio etiquette of only using just enough power to complete the communication or do we blast out 100 watts because we feel like it and if we use low power do we do it because it's polite or because it's a requirement for survival do we have well thought out communications plans with procedures for what to do if we get jammed do we practice portability not just going to a campsite or a mountaintop and setting up but constantly being on the move never staying in the same place for more than 30 minutes sending and receiving messages from different locations that are miles apart even over just one single day do we have contingencies to provide information for our communities in the event that governments don't want us to most of the ham radio concepts surrounding emergency communications are often attached to or work in conjunction with local authorities so do we have ways of serving our communities with true and accurate information when government disinformation boards even at the local level don't want us to and going to the extreme hypothetical do we have a plan for when we get the knock on the door not because we broke some fcc rule but solely because we are ham radio operators and might be perceived as a threat to the narrative granted the likelihood of this last one is pretty remote especially considering the history of the ham radio community cooperating with government but it's certainly something to think about for this new age of radio operators these are the kinds of things that we have to think about in our modern context no matter how unpleasant it may be another uncomfortable truth that the ham radio community is not super great at verbalizing is who we are communicating with of course this is a very basic requirement for all communications but i'm going to take this one further and really challenge the preconceived notions that come from the ham radio community on this before selecting a communication tool we must obviously have someone to communicate with for some this is going to be challenging enough because practicing radio comms is really boring for most people you might have a dozen friends that will train you at the range but nobody wants to practice setting up a weekly hf radio net this is a big problem and i don't want to gloss over it so we will talk about this more in due time but what i really mean is what else do we need to do to complete the communication what we do not want is the most up-to-date well-informed and well-communicated radio operators but the rest of our community or group is in the dark most of the time in ham radio communications between hams never leave the shack sure there are various emergency groups and coordination efforts between ham clubs and local authorities but very few radio operators have the same thing for their own community so we need to consider how radio station operators are going to get the information they receive out of their shack and where it needs to go whether this needs to be a system of runners or field telephones or even just a quick heads up to the local area with a handheld on vhf we need to figure these things out let's face it hf radios are some of the most expensive things that most of us are going to buy many times they're more expensive than a rifle so we just have to accept that not everyone in our community will be able to get an hf transceiver most people will be happy to let one guy on the team go that route and that would be the hfcom guy which is fine but we've really got to remember this and consider how we're going to disseminate the information that we exchange over hf radio hf radio is a tool and it's a tool that not very many people know how to use effectively much like the field of intelligence or even reconnaissance military commanders around the world and even warlords have not been super up to speed on how to utilize the resources that they have so don't let hf radio go unused and don't let it be inefficient hf radio is a tool that can grant you a lot of capabilities moving to more technical stuff with hf radio we can talk about things like mars mods and boy is this one dicey topic so this is going to require a bit of explaining for the backstory amateur radio has been around a long time almost as long as the concept of radio itself and back during the cold war a very interesting program was created by the us government called the military auxiliary radio system or mars this was a program to leverage amateur radio operators into federal service to help with things like civil defense at the time the us government needed to leverage as much talent as possible and this small program was a way for amateur radio operators to help the military in the event of a soviet invasion or just world war 3 in general well over the years and through a lot of politics and other events somebody realized the need for commonality and as the ham radio hobby exploded in the us and ham radio bands were formed and ham radios were specifically made for hobby use the military noticed that the ham radios on the market needed the ability to both function on ham radio bands but also on military frequencies again through more politics and advocacy among radio manufacturers the military and the fcc here's eventually what happened radio manufacturers would build ham radios to operate on every frequency that the radio physically could but manufacturers would also handicap their radios putting in circuitry to restrict what frequencies the radio could transmit on effectively locking the radio to only work on amateur radio frequencies but manufacturers would also build backdoor circuitry into their radios to make it easy for individual operators to modify them removing these restrictions altogether so that the radio could once again transmit on all of the frequencies it was built for this allowed amateurs to talk on mars frequencies instead of just the ham radio frequencies if the need arose well in today's world this practice is still continued even if it's rarely advertised the mars program itself is still technically around even though i think the mars program itself is pretty much dead some various service branches shut down their mars program a few years ago the practice of locking radius to only ham frequencies is still done to meet fcc regulations for manufacturers in most modern radios you have to open up the guts of the radio pull out one or two very specific diodes or resistors off the circuit board and the radio will be unlocked some radios don't require any messing around on the radio internals but rather quietly have firmware updates to do this each radio is different so if you want to remove the government mandated boot on your radio you will need to look up your specific manufacturer or model sometimes you might have to contact the manufacturer to figure out how to do it but in most cases you could just search online for mars mod and then the model of radio you have and you'll find it quite easily there are also companies that can do it for you if you don't feel comfortable doing a mars mod but it's up to you it's pretty simple in most cases at the end of the day taking advantage of the mostly defunct mars program allows us to fully unlock the potential of our radios so that technically the radio can transmit on every frequency it's built for of course this is against the fcc's rules and a big no-no for amateurs that's why if you're listening to non-amateur frequencies it's a barren wasteland with occasional encrypted military traffic so i'm not sure how practical this is in everyday life when you can only transmit off band during apocalyptic level emergencies but you can bet your last dollar that at least for me i would want to be able to use the radio as designed on any frequency i want and not be handicapped by the us government in the event of an emergency so even if you don't use it at all it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it and i would strongly recommend looking into doing a mars mod on your radios if the radio is capable of it just in case up next is mobility in an austere environment one of the ideas that doesn't get too much thought is portability in extremely rugged terrain now just looking around the ham radio world this doesn't seem to be true after all qrp and other portable operations seem to be at an all-time high and that's true it's clear that compact full-featured radios hitting the market have helped encourage the qrp game and that's great however from our perspective going down the ham route for qrp communications might not be quite what we're looking for it will get us in the ballpark but it's not exactly what we're looking for remember we're coming at this from the perspective of a person who's living a mobile lifestyle in extremely rugged terrain within this category we also have direction finding and privacy concerns again in the ham radio world where everyone wears their call sign like a badge of honor privacy is pretty much non-existent and that's fine i guess after all no one has ever targeted ham radio operators and forced them to cooperate with a tyrannical regime right right anyway those of us that can read the penciling on the partition can clearly see that these kinds of things are worth thinking about especially these days and if it's worth thinking about is worth thinking about seriously such as when considering the reality of operating in a rugged environment when you are being hunted by some other entity as we have talked about quite a lot the most effective security measure you can take to prevent direction finding is simply remaining mobile keep moving around and nobody will ever be able to find you however that's a lot easier said than done especially in the more rugged terrain which we might be trying to operate in rugged terrain or mountainous areas are a great equalizer sure it's hard for people to come get you but it's also hard for you to move around this means our qrp transmissions are not exactly going to look like a peaceful soda activation on a warm summer afternoon we're not exactly going to be sending position reports to the ham radio community saying here's my real name and my grid square in an emergency situation constant mobility camouflage ease of use simplicity reliability and durability are what we need and very few antenna slash radio slash computer combinations can meet all of these demands at the same time and that's okay after all we go to war with the gear we have not the gear we want right and if you right now had to grab a backpack and lie low in the mountains for a few years could you do it this is an almost impossible challenge for most of us as is but now imagine you've got a lot of other people counting on you maintaining not just your own sheer survival but also running operations with zero supporting infrastructure is not going to be possible without communications and the communications networks that will allow you to have capabilities in such a situation will have to be set up and in place before the emergency not after and all of this will require significant physical fitness and stamina it is just a sheer fact that very few people in the ham radio community place value on physical fitness just for me personally my own personal qrp radio setup that i'm using at the moment weighs about 10 to 15 pounds depending on which batteries i go with and that's just the calm stuff that's not an insignificant weight when you consider that i've also got a carrier out 50 to 70 pounds of other gear just to survive in the backcountry for maybe even months at a time if you're going light and say have an assault pack or chest rig or belt kit or whatever you might seriously be looking at your hf qrp rig being a pretty significant percentage of your total weight for what should have been a lightweight go fast setup so all of that being said we can see how physical fitness is paramount considering that we're not exactly preparing for your grandfather's soda activation and to get the calm shot we need to meet the calm window we're going for we might have to climb a tree after hiking 12 miles up and down mountains heck we might have to grab some water and a light backpack with our radio and climb a thousand feet of elevation in a couple of hours to get a message out your physical fitness is directly proportionate to your success as a radio operator and by extension an operator of any kind in the backcountry we don't want people to die because we were too fat to get up a hill to hit a repeater maintaining routine coms is the standard and even this baseline will require good physical fitness anything beyond that such as emergencies and bad conditions will require even higher fitness standards up next let's talk about some data modes in the ham radio world data modes are the new hotness they've become really popular over the past couple of years because they're much more efficient and much easier to use in an emergency and the first one i wanted to talk about is ready rtty mostly called riddy is short for radio teletype this is a digital mode that is what many would call ancient in fact teletype predates the invention of radio itself being one of the earliest ways of sending information using early manual computers for the radio community ready was the very first digital radio mode predating every digital mode that we know today ready is still used today and is very useful for certain tasks such as for sending weather data to ships at sea for the modern reasonable citizen who is forced to live an unreasonable lifestyle riddy can become very handy for communicating lots of text in a relatively short time frame of course other digital modes are arguably better at this and ready is far less popular which is sometimes a benefit sometimes using an obscure but still reliable digital mode is quite handy the real benefit of using riddy is that many radios have a way of decoding these messages right on the radio so you quite literally don't need anything but the radio itself to decode and sometimes send ready messages just hang up your antenna tune to the right frequency and you're done the radio itself will decode the messages sometimes quite long messages in real time right there on the screen for you to read very handy for sending intel reports or news from a larger base station to several units in the field in a contingent or emergency situation where we might have these kinds of communications set up at a certain time of day everyone can tune to the right frequency and pick up what the hq has to say weather reports news from the front general announcements the list is endless you could theoretically send a whole page of text in just a few minutes with everyone's radio decoding this message letter for letter in real time now all of this time we've been talking about ready but there are a lot of other similar modes you can look up yourself ready is really just the oldest member of a family of digital modes that include modes like psk31 psk31 is very similar to riddy but uses much less bandwidth and has a few other quirks and benefits as well there are of course some downsides to using riddy several modes have corrected some of these issues but speaking only for ready at the moment bandwidth can be an issue during times of peak usage the bandwidth on the ham bands that has been allocated to riddy is also comparatively small and during ham radio contests or during good propagation the bands can be difficult to use for practical purposes also riddy is not the best for weak signal propagation psk is better at this so definitely check out psk31 if you're interested in this kind of thing but for me i think of ready as more of a one-way communication because oftentimes your smaller qrp radios in rugged less than ideal field conditions might struggle to communicate back to an hq using ready the bottom line is that modes like ready are very useful for sending a lot of text very quickly in many cases to radios that can display that text in real time right on the radio's display without digging out any additional equipment like a laptop tablet raspberry pi or even a phone it's all quick and self-contained but that's not only what ready can be used for ready can be received and decoded easily by receivers and smartphone apps so quite literally all you need is a smartphone and a shortwave receiver or an sdr dongle all you have to do is fire up the app on your phone tune up the radio and hold the phone's microphone to the radio's speaker then you'll be able to read the messages on your screen in real time with these very minimal investments you can receive ready messages in real time without buying a very expensive hf transceiver for this purpose riddy has real potential to shine as an off-grid news service with people all throughout a region tuning in at a certain time of day to receive the daily news bulletin or other important information of course ready is not perfect and characters are frequently dropped that's why it's not really good for sending absolutely critical messages that cannot have an error every now and then if you try listing in yourself to the handbans you'll see that you will quite frequently see a lot of errors and you've kinda got a guess as to what some words are it's not a big deal for stuff like news or for full sentences but it is enough of a hassle that you might want to go with something else for super important comms but for easy mass communications that an entire region can listen to easily using minimal equipment riddy and other various similar modes are pretty hard to beat another handy feature for setting up networks in the field is the ability to send images over hf radio on some radios you can send digital images over the air using just the radio itself the utility of sending images over the radio is limitless as they say a picture is worth a thousand words and on the radio where the amount of words you use matters in many cases it could be much more efficient to take a couple of minutes and send a picture obviously we're not going to be sending extremely high quality images but on modern radios this isn't like the old days of sending sstv images either we're not talking about sending grainy thumbnails these images that can be sent over digital radio modes are infinitely more usable and valuable not just a postcard like in years past now this is where we start tumbling down the rabbit hole and i'm not quite sure about the technical side of things or even the legal side of of doing stuff like this because this is such a new feature that i'm not really sure if the community is kind of built up just yet so let me explain the the ic705 again shows its superiority here because built into this radio is the ability to send images from the radio itself to another this is not something that's particularly unique sending images over the radio can technically be done by any analog radio as well via stuff like sstv that's been around for decades now however what's unique is sending images on digital modes even then this is not unique to the ic705 other radios do this too because it's really taking advantage of the features of d-star now this one requires me to go way off-topic for a moment so please bear with me d-star is just another digital propagation method like dmr or p25 of course these have their differences and d-star is mostly known throughout the ham radio community for being used with hot spots now hot spots on their own are a somewhat controversial topic which requires a bit of explanation basically a ham radio hotspot is a little box with a little antenna on top of it connected to the internet which in turn connects it to other hotspots around the world the way it works is you key up your radio to hit the hotspot sort of like how you would hit a repeater but instead of that signal being amplified locally it gets sucked up by the internet and spit out on another hot spot around the world some hot spots are even connected to repeaters or reflectors or local nets you kind of get the idea this is generally how d-star works d-star is almost never talked about in the context of simplex operations now you see why it's necessary to go way off topic and explain all that pretty much everyone that uses d-star to talk is talking to a d-star gateway or reflector or hotspot or something like that and the people who like to skirt the fcc's rules find difficulty in doing this because you cannot use a d-star repeater or gateway or reflector without a call sign which gets transmitted along with your voice so for all of the illegal operators out there using d-star has no appeal but what about simplex you see d-star is just another way of organizing the data you want to send theoretically it would work the same as something like dmr in simplex mode transmitting from one radio to another with nothing else in between and it does but the cool part about d-star is that it can also be used to send images right from the radio itself without any other hardware needed except for maybe a smartphone if you wanted to use one and that is exactly why the ic705 shines you see the ic705 is not the only radio that has this feature built in the icom ic52 has this feature built in as does the kenwood thd 74a however the ic705 is to my knowledge the only hf radio rig that has this feature at least it's the only qrp rig that is so technically the ic705 can physically transmit images over hf frequencies using dstar's digital voice function in simplex mode and very little information on this unique feature exists because well 99 of dstar users are using repeaters or gateways or hotspots or reflectors or whatever almost nobody is using dstar in simplex mode my guess is that this combination of features is so new and the ic705 is so new that there just isn't a community built up around this specifically just yet again sending images is not new sending digital images is again not new sending images using the radio itself is again not new but having all of this together in one package that's also a qrp radio for hf frequencies well that is new again i think the ic705 is the only radio that does all of this at the moment i think the ic 7300 the 705's bigger brother also has the same features but it's obviously not a small radio in any case this is an exceptionally powerful setup and i hope that icom and other manufacturers keep on developing this out because this is a seriously exciting capability that certainly needs to be incorporated on more radios in the future every aspiring warlord needs the capability to blast out memes from the backcountry right at last we arrive at the king of digital hf modes js8 call js8 call is a very new mode that is based off of the equally legendary ft8 ft8 was developed a few years ago as a way to quickly and efficiently make simple handshake style contacts very quickly and automatically ft8 has not been without controversy over the years because it takes a lot of the personality out of radio which a lot of traditional guys don't like as for me i love these kinds of modes ft8 is exceptionally useful for training if you get into hf radio you will rapidly find out how finicky things usually are atmospheric conditions new antennas new radios rain snow thunderstorms you name it there are a lot of things that can change how far you can transmit this is not really great when you're wanting a steadfast and reliable communications method in years past we haven't really had the tools to kind of mitigate some of the downsides of hf radio like reliability right but these days we have great tools like ft8 which can help us mitigate some of these problems and make hf radio a lot more reliable especially for the prospective warlord up in the mountains right ft8 is great for making sure that you can still get messages out if you change something in fact if you are into making your own antennas for hf radio i'd say that ft8 is a mandatory tool for testing or rather it was a mandatory tool before js8 call came out js8 call is kind of the best of both worlds on js8 call you can send out long form text messages on one part of the band so that you can have your longer conversations if you want this is sort of like riddy or psk31 except messages are not going to come in letter by letter on js8 call more of like a burst com method but on the other side of the band you can use what's called heartbeats these are simple messages sort of like pings that are automatically sent by your radio to other radios who can hear you this is just like the handshake style messages on ft8 but on js8 call this feature can be used to store and forward messages js8 call allows you to store messages and even relay them from one station to another station that is out of range of you vastly increasing your range this can also be used to store messages as well so say you go offline for a bit and you miss a comm window well if someone tries to send you a message ordinarily you would miss it because you're all packed up and you're on the move on the trail right but if you have things set up with js8 called just right if say a different station another station in your network here's the message intended for you or if it was sent to that station first that station will store that message for you and when that third party station hears your heartbeat hears you come back online it will send you all of the message traffic that you missed when you were offline js8 call is super popular among hams and a lot of people have talked about js8 call more than we could ever hope to however it's the little things that often get left out like the fact that js8 call will work on any frequency you want not just the ham bands so in the zombie apocalypse where the scary fcc doesn't exist anymore we can actually use jsa call on whatever freak we want if we have done the mars mod to our radio and opened it up to its full potential very handy to have during those pesky zombie apocalypses up next is sending emails and specifically using winlink in peer-to-peer mode winlink has become popular throughout the hf radio world because it's one of the best ways to send emails via radio the way this works is pretty simple you download the software to your computer which is hooked up to your radio tune your radio to a gateway or node that's near you then compose and send your message the gateway picks up your radio transmission picks up your email and sends it via the internet to a gateway near the intended recipient which then spits it out at the right gateway and transmits it as a radio signal where your recipient can receive it on their radio it's actually a bit more complicated than that but that's kind of the gist of it well if you're like me you might have some pretty strong reservations about an internet-based middleman i understand that there are some good uses for this such as during local internet outages but as for me i am not interested in my data going over someone else's server much less over the internet in fact for the longest time i avoided winlink just based on principle for instance you cannot even open winlink express without putting in a call sign this presents a lot of challenges for the emergency user and generally speaking when you see software that is so obsessed with things like this um it's it tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth especially for an emergency use where the rules don't matter anymore if you've got software that's that's trying to enforce rules that don't exist anymore like in a zombie apocalypse scenario right um i don't want my own computer working against me all that being said this can be gotten around for only peer-to-peer communications which is what we want anyway it's a huge hassle though and for many it won't be worth it in peer-to-peer mode you can send emails from one offline user directly to another no internet no gateways and no gatekeepers again this is not easy to set up but it is possible so we may have to talk about this more in depth in the future though winlink is a bit of a hassle to get set up as it requires a couple of other programs and is more intricate to set up it is worth it if you can get winlink to work for peer-to-peer communications and peer-to-peer communications are really what i prefer anyway just because i don't like the idea of any potential for gatekeeping activity to occur someone doesn't like your call sign they can delete you from the winlink server i don't like that idea and especially for an emergency communications method if they people decide that oh this isn't a strong enough emergency and therefore we're not going to allow you to communicate on our servers well i just don't like that potential so peer-to-peer is really where i would prefer to be and winlink is really worth it in that case because you can send not just a wall of text in an email but you can also send attachments the ability to send attachments in an email from one radio to another is limitless even if it takes a bit of work to get there sometimes js8 call just isn't the right tool for what we're trying to communicate and putting up with winlink is the better option for me js8 call is a lot more user friendly and very reliable under somewhat kinetic situations for instance if i'm out on a hike or something and i've got five minutes to halt and send a quick heartbeat back home js8 call is great for that just sling up your antenna really quick click a couple of things on your tablet and you're good to go wind link is what i'd use for when you're at your bed down location for the night and you've got time to sit down and download a stack of emails from your base station this makes it easier on everyone because your hq can type up emails throughout the day and let them sit in the outbox until your radio comes back online then when you've got your winlink up and running the hq will hear your pings and send that stack of emails to you automatically very handy for exchanging a lot of data very efficiently up next is com scheduling a lot of people are by now familiar with the pace plan concept that is a list of primary alternate contingency and emergency communications that you can work through just in case your primary method doesn't work out but what we forget is that the pace plan is really just one big emergency plan itself if the primary frequency or bands doesn't work move to the alternate and so on this is really great for emergencies or just spotty communications and ensures that we have a coordinated plan to go to just in case things get squirrely but the pace plan is not really the same thing as a communications schedule and a schedule is just as important having a predetermined calm window is again not a new concept but if you're running large operations and trying to juggle communications between stations and team members in the field and routine message traffic to relay across the region or spot reports salute reports medical issues things can get to be a really big headache and since we're trying to be simple and efficient with our comms here's what a schedule might look like we can essentially take what would be an hour long com window and break it up into a more efficient data transfer this is of course just one way to skin the cat but in this example we start our comm window with js8 call this is great because js8 call allows us to kind of double dip we can use this chunk of time to both monitor heartbeats and at the same time send and receive actual text messages starting off with a 30 minute js8 call window allows us to start off this communications period by seeing which team members are out there who's available to talk how much traffic they have and so on i know this might be a bit confusing so let's take a look at what this might look like in a real world scenario taking into account everything that we've learned and planned for you've just arrived at your designated observation post for the night so you set up your antenna set your camp up get your comms schedule ready and start up js8 call to get ready to send your salute reports that you were writing earlier in the day we're going to assume for this example that everyone is behind restrictive terrain or too far away for vhf to be reliable so we can mostly run envis antennas which direct our signals straight up to the ionosphere where it gets reflected back to our area of operations like an umbrella this way as long as we have a clear view of the sky we don't have to worry about things like terrain or skip ranges and we can have solid comms throughout our region that are also slightly more difficult to direction find for anyone that might be hunting us so we get everything set up we you know make camp for the night and we wait for our communications window at 2200 or whatever time the comm window is we can see a total of five stations pop up on jsa to call our own station the hq that we need to communicate with one guy running an overnight donkey train supply route inbound to our hq's location and two other dudes like us sitting on some hill or observation post well we can find a clear offset on the waterfall and ping our hq's call sign with the number of reports that we have to send in our case we've only had two salute reports to send today but we can see from the message traffic on js8 that the guy running the donkey train has a stack of emails to send which he's hoping to send while he's still out about a day's drive out from the hq he probably could have sent these emails from the larger transmitter at the settlement he originated from but these are relatively low priority emails and rather than tie up the state level frequencies and com schedules it's more efficient to just physically take the communications and transmit them when he and his cargo get a little bit closer anyway and by hopping on js8 call all at the same time the hq can coordinate message traffic obviously the salute reports take priority so those are probably going to get stacked first and when those are sent the hq can ping the donkey train when ready and he can connect to the hq and transmit his stack of emails it doesn't take much effort even if everyone cannot hear everyone else as is extremely common in the world of radio using js8 calls store and forward function we can relay messages to the hq and make special accommodations for linking up later if comms are an issue and finally once the routine message traffic is exchanged the hq can then blast out a ready message for everyone such as news bulletins and weather this is an absolutely fantastic use for riddy since anyone in the area not just the people that we're talking about today anyone in the area that has a shortwave receiver or an sdr and a smartphone can download an app and receive the messages very handy for sending out messages to a large audience and before we close out this com window for the day we can dedicate five minutes or so to listening for hf voice transmissions voice communications are not ideal for transferring lots of data very quickly that's why we have relied on data modes in this example up until now but old school voice transmissions are simple and easy for most people to do plus if an inexperienced user who has no idea how to work a radio were to walk up to an hf transceiver chances are they would figure out how to verbally talk on it before they figured out how to work a data mode so this is kind of a simple last ditch com window that can be monitored by everyone just in case something is up with somebody and they've got to use voice to talk through an issue and if after all of this we still have stations that have gone dark well then we can start working through our formalized pace plan or our lost contact plan so as we can see even though this is not technically a pace plan itself this is just an efficient schedule for routine traffic it kind of takes the form of a pace plan generally speaking so that kind of helps as well remember schedules like this one can be very flexible this is just one way to look at small or even medium group size communications priorities scheduling will never take the place of a pace plan but using a schedule is a very helpful way to think about how we might set up complex infrastructures for routine communications of many different formats and finally let's talk encryption because i feel like that's going to come up encryption is of course a taboo subject in ham radio which is a rabbit hole i'm not going to go down at this point the bottom line is that encryption is possible in some situations in the commercial radio world and commercial radios are known for their ability to run encryption at least some of them are however what you will not find is encryption on hf radio shortwave radio is still the domain of hams so encryption is just not something that is feasible right now is it theoretically possible yes absolutely however someone would have to build it from the ground up on the software side and manufacturers would probably have to build radios that were compatible with it too which is highly unlikely so hf radio is probably not the best for your communications that you would like to remain private and for a lot of people this is a deal breaker which i understand i would warn against completely writing off hf radio though because you can't run encryption on it encryption is something that we need to work on for sure but we cannot discount hf radio simply because that's something that we don't have right now we can get it in the future and seeing as the only things keeping us from using one time pads on hf radio already is the fcc's rules we can see how this might not be as big of a challenge as we might think in the radio community we have a tendency to think small small teams operating tactical level comms at the smallest possible level 95 percent of all questions about radio on the internet seem to be what ptt do i get from my bowel thing or what pouch do i get from my plate carrier that's all well and good but if we accept the responsibilities that have been thrust upon us the responsibilities to create larger networks than just our small neighborhood group we can see the need for more than just handheld voice comms with hf radio we have to think bigger and that's what this whole exercise has been about let's not forget all of these things are not just useful for larping around in the woods with some friends if we were to take these scenarios as seriously as we can and really think about the times in which this stuff will be useful we have to be honest with ourselves if a day comes when we find ourselves living in remote locations for survival we will 100 need all of these things for more than just warfare by doing the mars mod on your radio you can ensure that the very moment that an emergency occurs you can have a fully functional radio that is not restricted in any way very handy during the zombie apocalypse scenario of the fcc not existing if you were bit by a snake you could send a picture of that snake to an underground doctor that you know on dstar for identification ready could be used for daily news updates or broadcasts or lists of checkpoint locations or even routine message traffic echoing the original uses from teletype js8 call could be used to ensure connectivity between settlements and temporary hole-up sites or even reimagine the telegram for group members who are trying to communicate with friends and family around the globe you could set up digital radio trading posts where community members could offer up goods for sale or advertise something they are looking to buy or trade js8 call could be helpful for maintaining contact with individuals frequently on the move transmitting updates from one site and using the store and forward feature to receive message traffic at their next location ensuring that no one not other groups or even the hq sending the messages in the first place truly knows where that one group or person is located rather than having a trailer set up with a handful of ham radio operators sending messages via voice we can have an entire disaster communications team working inside a tiny radio sending receiving and forwarding messages and data automatically as we are on the move and doing all of this wirelessly controlling the radio with devices like bluetooth or wi-fi this takes a lot of the hassle out of the radio game ensuring that even the most inexperienced users can seamlessly use these radio modes of course pretty much everything i've mentioned today is not unique to shortwave frequencies you can pretty much do all of this on vhf and uhf too it's just that almost all of the platforms software packages and radios that have these unique features are really intended for shortwave frequencies so yeah you could do a lot of this on vhf and uhf but most of the stuff we've talked about today is really meant to take advantage of the extreme long range and atmospheric propagation features of hf radio vhf and uhf are great but i'm not sure about anyone else but a lot of the time we here are out of range of each other or line of sight is not guaranteed and again if we're talking about communications between groups or people in remote locations hf radio is really one of the only options that we have vhf uhf repeaters are great and work really well but they are also disturbingly easy to collect intelligence on hf communications which can change frequency and broadcast location easily on a whim well that might be a better option in a lot of cases even for close range communications i know that this must seem like one giant advertisement for the icom ic705 but i assure you that's certainly not the case this is just the only radio that we know of that checks most of the boxes that we need for truly resilient reliable simple and durable communications in austere environments and i for one am very interested to see what radio manufacturers can do now that the bar has been set so high by icom and now that software-defined radios are the new hotness when it comes to these truly awesome radio modes i know that this is a lot of random information to take in but that's just the way it is a lot of times in the radio world nothing is ever easy in the field of communication and when we talk about radios it is very difficult to speak about these topics clearly and succinctly the best we can do is talk about random things you need to know tied loosely together by a common theme and that's okay because even right now the radio community is bringing a lot of brilliant minds together and making the field of communications a lot more simple an

…but in the right hands these devices might be really useful and i look forward to the next generations of such devices so to recap when we are making our modern day electronic listing posts we…