//The Wire//2300Z December 9, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CONFLICT CONTINUES IN ASIA. HIGH-PROFILE MIGRANT CRIMES INCREASE TENSIONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. ONE STUDENT KILLED IN STABBING AT NC HIGH SCHOOL. SHOOTING REPORTED AT KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Southeast Asia: The war between Thailand and Cambodia continues as before, with a few escalations of the conflict occurring overnight. Cambodia has continued rocket attacks, and Thailand has continued shelling random locations in the disputed border region. Thailand struck a few cultural sites and temples in Cambodia yesterday afternoon, with Thai forces also deploying some armored units to the Cambodian side of the border. Analyst Comment: At the moment this is a continuation of the same style of warfare that is often common throughout the third world; both sides conducting massive airstrikes and bombing campaigns, but very few casualties being the result. This is basically an international slap fight where the only real casualties are civilians, which have far outweighed the casualties sustained by combatants on either side so far. Despite the very low ratio of combat deaths to munitions dropped, the fighting this time around is more intense than when the conflict flared up a few months ago, so this conflict does have the potential to get more serious as time goes on. United Kingdom: Tensions remain palpably high following over a dozen high-profile migrant crimes coming to light over the past few days. In the Midlands, 2x Afghans were convicted of brutally assaulting a 15-year-old in a public park in an incident which the authorities have openly admitted to covering up due to civil unrest potential (the suspects' own defense attorney stated that if the video of their attack were to be made public, it would spark a riot). Separately, a different Afghan migrant (identified as Sultani Bakatash) assaulted two girls in Manchester a few days ago. Analyst Comment: Over the weekend, it was also discovered that the wife and children of the current leader of ISIS in Somalia lives in taxpayer-funded housing in Slough, which has inflamed tensions further. Abdul Qadir Mumin was known for encouraging terrorism throughout the U.K. before fleeing to Somalia around a decade ago, leaving his wife and children behind while he wages jihad with about a thousand fighters in Somalia. Mumin was (and still is) a highly-sought target, who the United States has conducted kinetic strikes on several times. Back in 2024, there was speculation that he was killed during a strike in Somalia, however this has been proven to be incorrect over time and his official status remains unknown. This is why there is outrage over this case; this guy is not an ordinary street fighter...he's the actual leader of the ISIS branch for Somalia. The family members that remain in taxpayer-funded housing actually knew of his terrorism-encouraging speeches (he was legendary for these talks before he fled the country). He escaped to Somalia, but his family stayed behind in the UK to receive benefits. -HomeFront- Georgia: State Rep. Sharon Henderson was arrested and indicted on charges of fraud pertaining to her activities during the COVID era. Rep. Henderson is accused of falsifying her employment status so as to obtain special benefits that were made available to those who were forced out of a job due to COVID. In order to get these benefits, she allegedly claimed to be a schoolteacher after actually leaving the job to campaign for the seat that she currently occupies. North Carolina: This afternoon a stabbing was reported at North Forsyth High School, which prompted a lockdown of the local area. Concerning casualties, one student was killed in the attack. Analyst Comment: At the time of this report, this is a developing story so the details will change. Right now it looks like this might have been a personal dispute and/or gang activity. Though very unconfirmed at this time, some photos have circulated local social media, which are screenshots of a video depicting the incident. The photos indicate this murder took place as a result of a fight between students. Illinois: This morning, an ICE raid was reported in Elgin, which rapidly deteriorated into a state of chaos. ICE personnel were targeting a High Value Individual (HVI) by the name of Jesus Acosta Gutierrez, a local TdA affiliate. During the raid, a large crowd formed and caused a riot during the arrest. Analyst Comment: The suspect was eventually captured, however this was one of the more kinetic arrests in the area. The key takeaway from this incident is that, per local reports, activists were on-scene to the site of the raid *before* ICE agents had even arrived themselves. This confirms that the DHS continues to have intelligence leaks which impact operations. This is not the first time this has happened in this specific area due to extremely lax Operational Security (OPSEC) by some of the people who have knowledge of impending operations. Local police officers have also been given the stand-down order (which has become common in most states ICE has conducted operations in so far). Kentucky: This afternoon a shooting was reported at Kentucky State University. 3x people were wounded during the attack, with one possible fatality being reported as well. The shooter was detained at the scene and has not yet been identified. Analyst Comment: This incident was first described as an Active Shooter situation, however as the situation developed this appears to be more of a general crime incident and not a deliberate/targeted mass shooting attempt. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comment: As it is relevant to the stories that have been popping up in the UK (and the US) over the past few weeks, a very specific bit of backpocket knowledge is helpful for rounding out the context of what's going on. In many cases, the individuals who are committing these horrific crimes are self-described "teenagers", when in reality they are fully-grown adult men. Age discrepancies are no excuse to commit horrific crimes, however in most justice systems around the world juveniles get a lighter sentence. And since the migrants have no identity documents to prove their age, the British government simply takes them at their word, and so a very obviously 30-year-old man becomes a 17-year-old so as to avoid a harsher sentence. This mentality is also used to sometimes gain access to children in the first place. Often times this is the scenario: We hear about a "high school student" being arrested for some horrific crime. The mugshot comes out, and the internet collectively thinks "that guy is a little old to be in high school". In most cases, this is a correct assessment; the initial birth certificate documents that migrants claim to have are incredibly easy to fake. This is an extremely common tactic that is used around the western world, from H1B's in the US to migrants from northern Africa making their way into the United Kingdom, there are now a whole lot of mugshots that allegedly depict a "juvenile", when in reality it's just an adult man who is lying because the procedures to verify one's identity are completely nonexistent when it comes to mass migration. In the context of the Midlands attack, one of the Afghans convicted of the crime plead guilty one single day before he turned 17, and thus will escape both adult charges and deportation. Despite the prevalence of this tactic being used, it is incredibly easy to prove either way. The exact age of a suspect can easily and quickly be identified with a simple x-ray of the hand and wrist. The Tanner-Whitehouse 2 (TW2) method is a non-invasive way for a radiologist to determine with shocking accuracy the exact age of a child, based on the development of bones in the hand. By the time a person is a fully-grown adult (i.e. not a juvenile) the bones are fully formed and thus very apparent on the x-ray. This method won't work that well for someone trying to slide in under the line by pretending to be 17-years-and-364-days-old to avoid adult charges, but it certainly will work to pick out the 40-year-old man from a high school classroom. Despite how well this works for this task, this method is not really used in the criminal justice field except in extreme cases where the suspect is very obviously lying (as opposed to more believable lies which if noticed, are usually conveniently ignored). Even in the best cases, it's circumstantial so this Bone Analysis is not usually conducted at all. All in all, this might help explain why some rather interesting mugshots keep popping up in both the United Kingdom, and the United States. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z February 16, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CONCERNS ARE GROWING FOR TWO CAPTURED AMERICAN PILOTS DETAINED IN WEST AFRICA. UNITED STATES SEIZES OIL TANKER IN INDIAN OCEAN.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Indian Ocean: Over the weekend the United States seized the M/T *VERONICA III*, one of the tankers which fled Venezuela in the wake of the fall of the Maduro government. The vessel was boarded and seized due to carrying oil in violation of American sanctions. West Africa: Concerns are growing concerning the safety of Two American pilots who were illegally detained by authorities in Guinea almost 6 weeks ago. On December 29th, Brad Schlenker and Fabio Espinal Nunez were piloting a private charter flight when they diverted to Guinea to refuel. They were given permission to land, and upon taxiing to the terminal, were greeted by armed soldiers. Both pilots have been detained since the incident. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: As of right now, the issue of the pilots in Guinea is still in the realm of diplomacy, as the families of the captives have been working with the Embassy to secure the pilots' release. Since this line of effort has not yielded any progress, the families have gone to the media with the hope that a media blitz will pressure the White House to speed along their release. All of this can probably be handled with a phone call, but just in case a more active response is called for, an understanding of the terrain might be helpful. So far, many details remain unknown as the initial circumstances of the detention are hard to verify. Flying for a regional charter airline in Africa is one of the most dangerous jobs a pilot can take, simply due to the corruption that is rampant throughout the continent. As such, it was an odd choice to choose to land in this country in particular, which has led many to assess that there is more to the story than meets the eye. The status of the original charter itself is also not known; some reports state that this flight was a ferry flight moving an aircraft that was recently sold (i.e. no passengers on board), whereas other reports state that they were flying a Brazilian family to Dubai. In any case, taking the story at face-value, the pilots diverted to Guinea for fuel and upon landing probably did not have enough cash on hand for the required bribes. Verbal permission to land is not good enough in Africa, and every stage along the way involves greasing palms, which always demand more. In this case, these pilots are currently serving as a bargaining chip, having chosen to land in Guinea at the worst possible time...during a state of military coup. General Mamadi Doumbouya is currently running the country after "winning" the election one day before these pilots landed. Doumbouya was the leader of the 2021 coup that overthrew the previous government, and over the past few years, the beleaguered nation has been host to the standard West African experience of poverty and violence while under military rule. Now that he's made his warlord status official, his government is probably looking to increase his standing. Nothing pads the ego of an African warlord quite like snatching a couple of Americans so as to get the attention of the United States (the mere dialog with the US alone will increase the legitimacy of his government). However, Doumbouya might find that his little stunt gets the wrong kind of attention from the United States if the pilots are not released immediately. Whatever the pilots did (if anything) to get detained is not a good enough excuse to avoid American involvement; the United States has proven over the past year that the US military will bomb a country back to the stone age for nothing more than a Klondike bar, so Doumbouya would be wise to correct this issue immediately. Local media reports (such that they are) indicate that the courts have actually declined to press charges against the pilots as they have done nothing wrong, but the military council running the administration of the country has refused to release them. On the ground, the situation is not great. Schlenker and Nunez have been allowed access to a phone semi-regularly, and have been making contact with family after their detention. State Department officials have also reportedly visited the prisoners in person, confirming that they are still alive. The exact facility that the pilots are being held in is not known, however they have stated that they are located in Conakry, so they are probably being held somewhere inside Conakry Central Prison (also known as Maison Centrale in French), which is the only known detention facility in the area. It is possible the pilots are being held elsewhere, however historically most leaders of African nations tend to keep a close eye on their political prisoners, and Guinea's history is no different, with the main prison being located a short distance from the Presidential Residences. This is important as if this is where the pilots are being held, they probably will not survive much longer. This facility is nestled in the heart of heavily urbanized terrain at the southwestern end of the peninsula which contains Guinea's capital city of Conakry. As far as prisons go, this facility is a standard example of the typical African prison, and conditions inside the compound are horrific at best and non-survivable at worst due to extremely harsh living conditions brought on by overcrowding, as well as the brutality of the guards who frequently torture prisoners. The terrain surrounding the compound is dense urban city, with little open ground. The target compound itself is encircled by slums to the North and East, and protected by a mud-brick wall approximately 8 feet tall, and 1-2 feet thick. Inside the perimeter sits a scattered array of one-story buildings, most of which are of cinderblock construction. Otherwise, defenses throughout the peninsula are sparse, with most weapons systems being centered around the standard Technical with a mounted crew-served weapon. It is likely that no MANPADs or other more sophisticated air defenses are located in the area. Most military forces are scattered sporadically, with the main bulk of somewhat-organized forces being concentrated at the Airport 7 miles to the northeast. All in all, if Doumbouya wants to take his chances, he's certainly welcome to do so, however it would be wise for him to seek a diplomatic solution immediately. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z December 27, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: USA CONDUCTS CRUISE MISSILE STRIKES IN NIGERIA. SOMALI FRAUD IN MINNESOTA EXPANDS IN SCOPE. RUSSIA STRIKES KIEV AFTER UKRAINE ASSASSINATES GENERAL IN MOSCOW. SERIAL DRIVE-BY SHOOTER ARRESTED IN AUSTIN.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Ukraine: Over the past few days Russia has responded to the Ukrainian targeting of a Russian General in Moscow, by conducting strikes of their own in Kiev. LTG Fanil Sarvarov was assassinated via an explosive device that was placed inside his vehicle outside his apartment in Moscow. Analyst Comment: Before his death, LTG Sarvarov was the leader of Russia's Operational Training Directorate for the General Staff. The strikes in Kiev are not exactly good news for the peace process, but neither is an assassination of a General in Moscow, so this tit-for-tat targeting is mostly a wash. Nigeria: The Pentagon conducted missile strikes in the Islamic State-held northwestern territories of the nation on Christmas Day. The strikes were carried out on known Islamic State training camps and facilities, which have been legendary for carrying out exploitation, kidnapping, and terrorist attacks around the nation. Local Nigerian officials stated that the US carried out strikes in the Sokoto district, targeting the sub-group referred to as Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP). Analyst Comment: The rampant insurgencies carried out by the Islamic State throughout the entire Sahel region are by no means a new conflict, and Nigeria specifically has been host to kidnapping/ransom-style attacks on populated villages for several decades. In short, various ethnic cleansing and genocide operations have become regular and routine throughout the region over the past few centuries, but more recently have come to a head as insurgents consolidate power around the continent. These recent strikes were significant, but conflicts in Africa do not often abide by the universally understood ways of warfare in the west. As such, whether or not these strikes actually did anything is anyone's guess; erasing a map grid square which previously held a significant training camp surely would have resulted in some level of setback for militants, however only time will tell if this effort will reduce the capabilities of insurgent groups in the region. Of note, the technical details of the strikes are contradictory between the various agencies involved. For instance, Nigerian officials state that the strikes were carried out by MQ-9 Reaper drones, however the Pentagon published a video of (likely Tomahawk) missiles being launched from an unnamed Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer. This doesn't necessarily mean much, as it's very doubtful that the US told Nigeria anything about the strike beyond very basic details. However, this does bring into question exactly what intelligence was used to conduct the strikes. USAFRICOM has had a counter-insurgency mission throughout the continent for decades, so it's not out of the question for the US to carry out strikes without Nigeria's help at all (which is probably for the best). After all, Islamic State training camps aren't exactly hard to find. However, the Nigerian government has serious incentive to feed the US bad intel which results in bad strikes. Throughout the third world, one of the biggest complications for targeting are local sources providing "tips" on "insurgent activity" which is really just a disgruntled man wanting his landlord to be struck by a drone. Many Hellfire missiles have been the settling factor for personal debts between neighbors, from Afghanistan to Syria and every desert war in between. This will be something to consider if these strikes continue, as very few official sources have provided any information at all regarding what's actually going on, on the ground. -HomeFront- Idaho: Yesterday afternoon an active shooter was reported at the Shoshone County Courthouse. 3x people were wounded during the attack, and the shooter was also killed during the assault. Local authorities state that John Drake, a 77-year-old local man, entered the Sheriff's Office lobby and began shooting randomly. This resulted in a standoff that lasted a few hours before authorities shot and killed Drake, ending the incident. Texas: A shooting was reported in Hays County after a man began shooting randomly into residential homes. Local authorities state that Abraham Herrera was involved in another random drive-by shooting incident roughly two days after he was released following a different shooting. Herrera remains in custody this time, after being arrested again over the holiday. Analyst Comment: This individual has been involved in three separate shootings over the past couple of months. The first shooting took place on November 3rd, which took the form of a drive-by shooting being conducted in Kyle. At least one person was wounded during the attack, and Herrera's license plate was obtained from that initial crime scene. About a week later, a barricaded-shooter incident was reported in the township of Buda, also involving Herrera. Eventually, Herrera was taken into custody by SWAT, and the incident resolved. Two days later, he was released from jail and conducted another random drive-by shooting in Martindale. Herrera was taken back into custody earlier this week, and remains in jail on charges stemming from the three shooting incidents. Washington: A Seattle Police Lieutenant was carjacked after responding to a man walking on the freeway Christmas morning. The incident was captured on video by an observer, which involved the officer being dragged out of her vehicle and left on the freeway as the assailant escaped in the police cruiser. This triggered a pursuit, which ended after the suspect crashed the stolen police vehicle and was subsequently detained. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In Minnesota, more details have come to light regarding the scale of Somali fraud that is currently being conducted throughout Minneapolis. Concern has been growing over the past few months as more scrutiny has been placed on the Somali community in Minneapolis, with several different investigative endeavors being undertaken to shed light on what's going on. Once every few days, a new investigative journalist picks a random Somali healthcare site or "learning" institution, only to chip away the paint to find rampant fraud on the inside. The latest endeavor involved Youtuber Nick Shirley finding a random building in Minneapolis with a misspelled sign, quite aptly labeled as the "Quality Learing Center". Ironic and humorous mistake aside, approximately five minutes of investigation revealed that this facility is a shell corporation tied up with the Autism fraud scam that came to light a few weeks ago. This one facility has received $4 million in state funding, and is simply a shell company with no actual clients, continuing the trend of dozens of similar organizations being uncovered in Minneapolis under identical circumstances. This latest spotlight focus also lines up with what federal agencies have had to say on the Somali fraud situation in general. A few days ago, several more individuals were indicted on charges related to the earlier Autism and Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) fraud schemes. After the indictments were announced, First Assistant US Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson stated that of the $18 billion in federal funding allocated for the entire state's Medicaid program, roughly half has been outright stolen by Somalis via fraud. If this figure is accurate, this would make this situation one of the largest instances of fraud ever committed in the United States that did not involve big banks. For context, the Colonial Bank fraud scheme (which was one of the largest scams that came to light during the 2008 financial crisis) only involved about $3 billion in securities fraud. In this case, the city of Minneapolis alone is looking at roughly triple that amount of fraud, all of which has been conducted simply by Somalis signing up for government benefits fraudulently. No stock market manipulation, no lying about mortgage data, no men in suits being interviewed on Bloomberg about the failure of an entire financial ecosystem...all of this is simply rampant fraud at the individual level to the point that nearly the entire GDP of Somalia itself (roughly $11 billion) is being supported solely by the taxpayers of Minnesota (and all US taxpayers at large). As if this wasn't serious enough to convey the scale of what $9 Billion (with a "B") worth of fraud looks like, a couple of years ago a think tank estimated that North Korea's entire ballistic missile program has cost the DPRK almost $2 billion over the past 50 years (adjusted for the nature of a different financial system skewing the data). Roughly 80,000 Somalis in one single American city have stolen almost 4 times what it cost North Korea to build nuclear weapons and ICBMs over half a century. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z May 18, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CRIME AND SHOOTING SPREES RUN RAMPANT IN UNITED STATES. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN ITALY. WAR IN MIDDLE EAST CONTINUES AS STRIKES REPORTED AT EMIRATI NUCLEAR FACILITY. U.S. STRIKES ISIS LEADERSHIP IN NIGERIA. FUEL CRISIS RESULTS IN SHARP INCREASE IN SHIPPING PRICES WORLDWIDE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: The situation remains as before, with most of the focus remaining on the restriction of travel through the Strait of Hormuz. As of this morning, all diplomatic efforts between the United States and Iran have failed to open the Strait, and traffic remains stagnant through the waterway. A handful of tankers have transited out of the Strait via the Iranian route, but Project Freedom has not resulted in any western-aligned merchants transiting the Strait since the initial skirmishes on it's first day. Around the region, limited targeting efforts continue to take place. Yesterday, the UAE reported drone strikes at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in Al Dhafra. Three drones were detected and two were shot down, but one drone successfully stuck the compound. None of the reactors at the facility were breached, and no release of radiological material was reported. Nigeria: Hostilities have increased sharply over the past few days, with the United States conducting several airstrikes targeting ISIS facilities. President Trump himself announced the completion of a raid targeting Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, a senior commander within the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) insurgent group. Analyst Comment: Prior to a few days ago, the United States was only supporting Nigeria with intelligence and surveillance assets, and not openly engaging in the war themselves, at least as far as the public is concerned. The weekend raid on an ISIS stronghold is a major escalation of US involvement in the war, even though the mission may have initially been to capture al-Minuki. A good bit of reading between the lines is needed (along with a bit of speculation) to interpret what happened, as this announcement is different than other targeting efforts throughout the continent. The wording of all official reports implies that this was a ground operation to capture the leadership who had congregated together inside a compound. At some point, this ground operation transitioned to airstrikes taking out the target, with the High-Value Targets (HVTs) being killed during the strike. Speculating a bit, it's possible that when the ground force experienced significant resistance and everyone scattered from the meeting site on motorcycles, the US bombed the building and got al-Minuki by happenstance. This is a tale as old as time in the targeting world (especially in Africa), and aligns with the previous strikes within Sokoto, which targeted senior ISIS leadership in the same area back in December. Italy: Over the weekend a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Modena, as a terrorist rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people on Via Emilia Centro, a historic street in the center of town. A total of 10x people were wounded during the attack, with 4x victims remaining hospitalized in critical condition. The assailant has been identified as Salim El Koudri, and local authorities have not commented on motive. -HomeFront- Texas: Over the weekend a shooting spree was reported in Austin, as three suspects conducted approximately 12x small arms attacks around the city. The incident began Saturday with the theft of firearms from a local store, and also the theft of a vehicle from an apartment complex in north Austin. From there, the suspects conducted a joyride around the city, shooting at random citizens. One of the first targets was Fire Station 26 on Wentworth Drive, along with Fire Station 32 near Rollingwood. Throughout the city, over 20x different shooting calls were reported, with over 12x different shooting victims resulting from the shooting spree. At some point during the series of attacks from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning, police made the connection that all of these attacks were related and involved the same suspects. A BOLO notice was put out by Austin PD, which was picked up by Manor Police Department, with one patrol officer visually observing the vehicle as the BOLO was put out on the radio. This immediately turned into a pursuit, with the suspects eventually crashing in a muddy field on state road 973, near a residential area in Manor. After the pursuit ended, the occupants of the vehicle scattered, and a large shelter-in-place order was issued while the manhunt was conducted to find the suspects. Two of the suspected shooters were captured immediately, a 17 year old and a 15 year old, both of which have long criminal records. A third suspect remained at large until nightfall, when he was discovered and arrested. California: This afternoon, an active shooter incident was reported at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Analyst Comment: No word yet on casualties or any other details yet as this is a developing situation. However, a media helicopter captured a video of a very clearly deceased individual located at the front entrance to the facility, so at least one person (possibly the shooter) was killed during the attack. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Around the world, fuel prices remain a growing concern. Over the past few days, sharp increases in the price of freight has been observed as the cost of diesel makes it more expensive to move cargo within the homeland. At the national level, the LMI Transportation index indicates that freight costs are the highest in recent memory, with the latest numbers for April being released and confirming what we already know...moving cargo is now extremely expensive. At the more operational level, this sharp increase in shipping costs can be seen with the price of moving a standard Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) shipping container. Before the war began, this container (on average) cost $980 to ship from China, to the Middle East (via the Red Sea route, not through the Strait of Hormuz). Right now, this same container costs about $4,131 to ship along the same route. During the COVID era, the maximum price observed was about $3,900 so as it stands, the oil shock has already impacted shipping costs more than COVID did. These costs are being observed right now within the United States both in terms of goods rising in price, but also availability. Throughout the Middle East, lots of talk continues and there isn't really any indicator for when this crisis might end. This afternoon, President Trump stated that the large-scale bombing of Iran was scheduled to continue tomorrow, but he has decided to hold off on the resumption of the war while a negotiated settlement is allegedly imminent. At the moment, it's not clear as to if this is just diplomatic posturing, or a genuine diplomatic effort. This exact situation was also alleged during the halt to Project Freedom, which stopped after one day due to a settlement that never came. In this case, this could be a negotiating tactic, but overall the war is certainly not over, and the effects of the war (i.e. the global petroleum crisis) remain largely unmitigated. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z May 18, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CRIME AND SHOOTING SPREES RUN RAMPANT IN UNITED STATES. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN ITALY. WAR IN MIDDLE EAST CONTINUES AS STRIKES REPORTED AT EMIRATI NUCLEAR FACILITY. U.S. STRIKES ISIS LEADERSHIP IN NIGERIA. FUEL CRISIS RESULTS IN SHARP INCREASE IN SHIPPING PRICES WORLDWIDE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: The situation remains as before, with most of the focus remaining on the restriction of travel through the Strait of Hormuz. As of this morning, all diplomatic efforts between the United States and Iran have failed to open the Strait, and traffic remains stagnant through the waterway. A handful of tankers have transited out of the Strait via the Iranian route, but Project Freedom has not resulted in any western-aligned merchants transiting the Strait since the initial skirmishes on it's first day. Around the region, limited targeting efforts continue to take place. Yesterday, the UAE reported drone strikes at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in Al Dhafra. Three drones were detected and two were shot down, but one drone successfully stuck the compound. None of the reactors at the facility were breached, and no release of radiological material was reported. Nigeria: Hostilities have increased sharply over the past few days, with the United States conducting several airstrikes targeting ISIS facilities. President Trump himself announced the completion of a raid targeting Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, a senior commander within the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) insurgent group. Analyst Comment: Prior to a few days ago, the United States was only supporting Nigeria with intelligence and surveillance assets, and not openly engaging in the war themselves, at least as far as the public is concerned. The weekend raid on an ISIS stronghold is a major escalation of US involvement in the war, even though the mission may have initially been to capture al-Minuki. A good bit of reading between the lines is needed (along with a bit of speculation) to interpret what happened, as this announcement is different than other targeting efforts throughout the continent. The wording of all official reports implies that this was a ground operation to capture the leadership who had congregated together inside a compound. At some point, this ground operation transitioned to airstrikes taking out the target, with the High-Value Targets (HVTs) being killed during the strike. Speculating a bit, it's possible that when the ground force experienced significant resistance and everyone scattered from the meeting site on motorcycles, the US bombed the building and got al-Minuki by happenstance. This is a tale as old as time in the targeting world (especially in Africa), and aligns with the previous strikes within Sokoto, which targeted senior ISIS leadership in the same area back in December. Italy: Over the weekend a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Modena, as a terrorist rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people on Via Emilia Centro, a historic street in the center of town. A total of 10x people were wounded during the attack, with 4x victims remaining hospitalized in critical condition. The assailant has been identified as Salim El Koudri, and local authorities have not commented on motive. -HomeFront- Texas: Over the weekend a shooting spree was reported in Austin, as three suspects conducted approximately 12x small arms attacks around the city. The incident began Saturday with the theft of firearms from a local store, and also the theft of a vehicle from an apartment complex in north Austin. From there, the suspects conducted a joyride around the city, shooting at random citizens. One of the first targets was Fire Station 26 on Wentworth Drive, along with Fire Station 32 near Rollingwood. Throughout the city, over 20x different shooting calls were reported, with over 12x different shooting victims resulting from the shooting spree. At some point during the series of attacks from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning, police made the connection that all of these attacks were related and involved the same suspects. A BOLO notice was put out by Austin PD, which was picked up by Manor Police Department, with one patrol officer visually observing the vehicle as the BOLO was put out on the radio. This immediately turned into a pursuit, with the suspects eventually crashing in a muddy field on state road 973, near a residential area in Manor. After the pursuit ended, the occupants of the vehicle scattered, and a large shelter-in-place order was issued while the manhunt was conducted to find the suspects. Two of the suspected shooters were captured immediately, a 17 year old and a 15 year old, both of which have long criminal records. A third suspect remained at large until nightfall, when he was discovered and arrested. California: This afternoon, an active shooter incident was reported at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Analyst Comment: No word yet on casualties or any other details yet as this is a developing situation. However, a media helicopter captured a video of a very clearly deceased individual located at the front entrance to the facility, so at least one person (possibly the shooter) was killed during the attack. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Around the world, fuel prices remain a growing concern. Over the past few days, sharp increases in the price of freight has been observed as the cost of diesel makes it more expensive to move cargo within the homeland. At the national level, the LMI Transportation index indicates that freight costs are the highest in recent memory, with the latest numbers for April being released and confirming what we already know...moving cargo is now extremely expensive. At the more operational level, this sharp increase in shipping costs can be seen with the price of moving a standard Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) shipping container. Before the war began, this container (on average) cost $980 to ship from China, to the Middle East (via the Red Sea route, not through the Strait of Hormuz). Right now, this same container costs about $4,131 to ship along the same route. During the COVID era, the maximum price observed was about $3,900 so as it stands, the oil shock has already impacted shipping costs more than COVID did. These costs are being observed right now within the United States both in terms of goods rising in price, but also availability. Throughout the Middle East, lots of talk continues and there isn't really any indicator for when this crisis might end. This afternoon, President Trump stated that the large-scale bombing of Iran was scheduled to continue tomorrow, but he has decided to hold off on the resumption of the war while a negotiated settlement is allegedly imminent. At the moment, it's not clear as to if this is just diplomatic posturing, or a genuine diplomatic effort. This exact situation was also alleged during the halt to Project Freedom, which stopped after one day due to a settlement that never came. In this case, this could be a negotiating tactic, but overall the war is certainly not over, and the effects of the war (i.e. the global petroleum crisis) remain largely unmitigated. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z July 13, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: GULF WAR REIGNITES AS MAJOR STRIKES REPORTED THROUGHOUT MIDDLE EAST. HOUTHIS JOIN THE WAR AS MILITARY BASES STRUCK IN SAUDI ARABIA. USA/IRAN CONTINUE MUTUAL TARGETING WITH MANY MILITARY INSTALLATIONS TARGETED THROUGHOUT THE DAY. SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM PASSES AWAY UNDER UNCLEAR CIRCUMSTANCES IN WASHINGTON.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Middle East: Over the weekend the war continued to escalate with major attacks being reported throughout the region. On Saturday, the Iranians allegedly struck a containership in the Strait of Hormuz for attempting to sneak through the waterway without their permission. The crew of this vessel abandoned ship, and the vessel is reportedly sinking in the Strait. After this initial strike, the United States struck several dozen targets within Iran. One of the most significant strikes conducted by the United States was an airstrike at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. One of the buildings a few feet away from the reactor core was struck, and the status of the power plant is unknown. At least one of the attacks this morning involved the United States conducting several Unmanned Surface Vessel attacks on the port of Bandar Abbas, targeting an Iranian submarine and several other warships. Analyst Comment: Other more traditional airstrikes also continued regularly throughout the day, with Iranian retaliatory strikes being reported at nearly every US base in the region, from Kuwait to the UAE. Full battle damage assessment will take some time due to the sheer volume of locations struck by both the United States and Iran. Red Sea/HOA: Following last night's targeting efforts to the north in the Persian Gulf, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia engaged in mutual targeting early this morning. Houthi rebels launched several ballistic missiles toward targets in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi's responded by conducting airstrikes throughout the Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. Analyst Comment: These targeting efforts in Yemen have complicated maritime shipping through the Bab El Mandeb Strait, elevating concerns that another major maritime choke point might be turning into a warzone. During the American campaign to combat the Houthis in March of last year (dubbed Operation ROUGH RIDER), the Houthis demonstrated the ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait, to the point that nearly all maritime shipping chose to re-route around the continent of Africa. Though that military operation departed the news headlines after a few weeks, even as of a year later (even before the Iran war began), many maritime shipping companies were avoiding the Red Sea a full year after the strikes. Everyone has been waiting for the Houthis to enter the current war on the Iranian side, and last night's strikes may be an indication that relationship is growing. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Saturday night, Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly died after suffering a cardiac incident at his home on Capitol Hill, after returning from his trip to Ukraine. Initial statements claim that he suffered a tear of his aorta, and died instantly. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: As one might expect based on current events, the theories surrounding Graham's death largely focus around his trip to Ukraine. Normally, the trip into Ukraine for diplomats involves flying into Poland, then taking a train into Kiev. This trip usually takes most of the day. Also, on the same day as Graham's trip, Russia conducted two major strikes in Kiev. Some claims have been made that both of these strikes targeted both the drone factory that Graham visited, but also the hotel where he was staying during his visit. These claims will take some time to verify independently. Due to the timing of Graham's alleged departure, it's possibly mathematically questionable that Graham would have had enough time to transit back to the United States before his death was reported. As always, there's enough discrepancy in the timing to make it technically possible for Graham to have arrived home from Ukraine and immediately had a cardiac incident, but this timing would have been incredibly tight. In short, the theory that Graham was actually killed in Ukraine holds some weight at this present moment, based on the evidence we have right now, even as speculative as it is. Further investigation will indicate whether or not more credence should be granted to this possibility. Perhaps the biggest bit of evidence countering the theory of Graham being killed in Ukraine, is the sheer logistics of such a coverup operation. There's very little chance that his remains would have been located, recovered, identified, and transported back to the United States if he was killed during the strikes on a Ukrainian drone factory. These attacks would have made it challenging to identify anyone's remains, and similarly to the concerns of Graham possibly not having enough time to arrive back in the US, timing is the main issue. If Graham was observed alive after his departure from Ukraine, this would obviously dispel any of the more nefarious theories, but as it stands, it is not known which flight he took from Poland to the United States (which was likely a military or government flight). All things considered, the suspicious and coincidental circumstances of Graham's death can certainly be verified either way in due time, but Graham's death coupled with Senator Mitch McConnell's questionable status, means that Washington has been host to several shakeups involving key wartime decision makers this week. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z July 13, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: GULF WAR REIGNITES AS MAJOR STRIKES REPORTED THROUGHOUT MIDDLE EAST. HOUTHIS JOIN THE WAR AS MILITARY BASES STRUCK IN SAUDI ARABIA. USA/IRAN CONTINUE MUTUAL TARGETING WITH MANY MILITARY INSTALLATIONS TARGETED THROUGHOUT THE DAY. SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM PASSES AWAY UNDER UNCLEAR CIRCUMSTANCES IN WASHINGTON.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Middle East: Over the weekend the war continued to escalate with major attacks being reported throughout the region. On Saturday, the Iranians allegedly struck a containership in the Strait of Hormuz for attempting to sneak through the waterway without their permission. The crew of this vessel abandoned ship, and the vessel is reportedly sinking in the Strait. After this initial strike, the United States struck several dozen targets within Iran. One of the most significant strikes conducted by the United States was an airstrike at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. One of the buildings a few feet away from the reactor core was struck, and the status of the power plant is unknown. At least one of the attacks this morning involved the United States conducting several Unmanned Surface Vessel attacks on the port of Bandar Abbas, targeting an Iranian submarine and several other warships. Analyst Comment: Other more traditional airstrikes also continued regularly throughout the day, with Iranian retaliatory strikes being reported at nearly every US base in the region, from Kuwait to the UAE. Full battle damage assessment will take some time due to the sheer volume of locations struck by both the United States and Iran. Red Sea/HOA: Following last night's targeting efforts to the north in the Persian Gulf, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia engaged in mutual targeting early this morning. Houthi rebels launched several ballistic missiles toward targets in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi's responded by conducting airstrikes throughout the Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. Analyst Comment: These targeting efforts in Yemen have complicated maritime shipping through the Bab El Mandeb Strait, elevating concerns that another major maritime choke point might be turning into a warzone. During the American campaign to combat the Houthis in March of last year (dubbed Operation ROUGH RIDER), the Houthis demonstrated the ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait, to the point that nearly all maritime shipping chose to re-route around the continent of Africa. Though that military operation departed the news headlines after a few weeks, even as of a year later (even before the Iran war began), many maritime shipping companies were avoiding the Red Sea a full year after the strikes. Everyone has been waiting for the Houthis to enter the current war on the Iranian side, and last night's strikes may be an indication that relationship is growing. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Saturday night, Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly died after suffering a cardiac incident at his home on Capitol Hill, after returning from his trip to Ukraine. Initial statements claim that he suffered a tear of his aorta, and died instantly. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: As one might expect based on current events, the theories surrounding Graham's death largely focus around his trip to Ukraine. Normally, the trip into Ukraine for diplomats involves flying into Poland, then taking a train into Kiev. This trip usually takes most of the day. Also, on the same day as Graham's trip, Russia conducted two major strikes in Kiev. Some claims have been made that both of these strikes targeted both the drone factory that Graham visited, but also the hotel where he was staying during his visit. These claims will take some time to verify independently. Due to the timing of Graham's alleged departure, it's possibly mathematically questionable that Graham would have had enough time to transit back to the United States before his death was reported. As always, there's enough discrepancy in the timing to make it technically possible for Graham to have arrived home from Ukraine and immediately had a cardiac incident, but this timing would have been incredibly tight. In short, the theory that Graham was actually killed in Ukraine holds some weight at this present moment, based on the evidence we have right now, even as speculative as it is. Further investigation will indicate whether or not more credence should be granted to this possibility. Perhaps the biggest bit of evidence countering the theory of Graham being killed in Ukraine, is the sheer logistics of such a coverup operation. There's very little chance that his remains would have been located, recovered, identified, and transported back to the United States if he was killed during the strikes on a Ukrainian drone factory. These attacks would have made it challenging to identify anyone's remains, and similarly to the concerns of Graham possibly not having enough time to arrive back in the US, timing is the main issue. If Graham was observed alive after his departure from Ukraine, this would obviously dispel any of the more nefarious theories, but as it stands, it is not known which flight he took from Poland to the United States (which was likely a military or government flight). All things considered, the suspicious and coincidental circumstances of Graham's death can certainly be verified either way in due time, but Graham's death coupled with Senator Mitch McConnell's questionable status, means that Washington has been host to several shakeups involving key wartime decision makers this week. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z May 21, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT VISITS WHITE HOUSE. AX ATTACK STRIKES FRANCE, ONE JUVENILE FATALITY. KNIFE ATTACK OCCURS IN AMSTERDAM, MULTIPLE DEAD AND WOUNDED.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- France: Yesterday evening a 14-year-old boy was murdered by an assailant in Nogent-sur-Oise, a small town north of Paris. Local authorities have not released any information regarding the attack, however locals who witnessed the incident state that the assailant murdered the boy with an ax in the parking lot of a grocery store. Netherlands: A stabbing attack was reported in Amsterdam yesterday, resulting in two fatalities, and the wounding of two responding police officers. AC: This situation does not appear to be a random attack, but rather a domestic situation that occurred in an area well known for heavy drug use. As such, the circumstances of the two fatalities are not clear; Dutch authorities have stated that the responding officers did fire their weapons during this incident, however very few details have indicated what actually happened here. -HomeFront- Midwest: Disaster recovery efforts continue throughout the region, following the severe weather systems that have caused devastation throughout the region. Local authorities in St. Louis are investigating their emergency response procedures after a substantial tornado ripped through the downtown metro area on Friday. AC: Today local authorities stated that the city's tornado siren network was not functioning at the time it was needed, resulting in no tornado warnings being sounded. The head of the St. Louis City Emergency Management Agency has been placed on leave after it became clear that the citywide siren system didn't actually work, and possibly had not been operationally tested in decades. Routine tests are normally mandatory, however when asked about it the interim CEMA official (a Fire Captain temporarily appointed to the job while the investigation continues) did not provide a date as to when the system was last tested, other than when it was installed in 1999. From the descriptions of what possibly happened, it sounds like the physical button and/or switch to activate the tornado sirens did not work when officials attempted to activate it. Washington D.C. - This morning South African President Cyril Ramaphosa conducted a state visit to the White House. During the visit, the main point of focus was the domestic situation in South Africa, with President Trump pressing Ramaphosa regarding the concerns of genocide within his nation. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Despite the smiles and handshakes presented to the media, the state visit by South African leadership did not go well. Though the tone was not as openly hostile as Zelenskyy's infamous visit, the ideas conveyed were equally serious (if not moreso). When President Ramaphosa echoed his previous statements flat-out denying that any genocide was taking place, President Trump's team played various video clips showing evidence that these statements are false. Considering that this audio/visual presentation was pre-arranged (but interestingly, not announced beforehand), the White House probably knew how this situation might go and had planned this meticulously. In short, this visit was probably the White House's attempt to put South African leadership on notice regarding their aspirations for ethnic cleansing. Before the civilizational decline of recent times South Africa was a powerful player in the region, and the White House is probably trying to curb the increasingly exponential rise in cultural violence that is driving South Africa further into a state of decline. Whether or not these efforts will pan out, is anyone's guess. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for February 28th, 2026. Due to current events, this will be more of a topical special update on the large-scale regional war that has broken out in the Middle East. So, let's get right to it. This morning, large-scale bombing campaigns began throughout the nation of Iran as American and Israeli forces began their war to topple the Ayatollah. This campaign has been dubbed Operation Epic Fury by the Pentagon with the Israelis calling their component Operation Roaring Lion. Based solely on President Trump's address to the nation that was posted early this morning, the goal of this operation is regime change, which so far has taken the form of American forces bombing Iranian targets to assist the Iranian people in rising up and overthrowing the Ayatollah, which we'll get to in a moment. American airstrikes have been conducted in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, and many other locations. Right now, it's challenging to see what actually got hit due to the internet and power outages throughout the nation. However, we can see what they did in response. Immediately after the first bombs were dropped, Iranian forces retaliated with whatever munitions they had ready for an immediate knee-jerk response. Most of these munitions were long-range Shahed 136 drones or some of their longer-range cruise missiles. So, as of right now, the big guns have not come out when it comes to the Iranian response just yet. Nevertheless, Iranian targeting efforts have been so far fairly minimal, all things considered. Civilian aviation has largely been grounded throughout most of the region as Iranian and American cruise missiles pass each other in the skies on their way to their targets. Kuwait International Airport was hit by Iranian forces a few hours ago with Terminal 1 being severely damaged. Structures in downtown Dubai have also been targeted with various Palm hotels receiving direct hits this morning. To protect against the potential deployment of ballistic missiles within Iran itself, American and Israeli forces are flying Reaper drones in many cities around the nation, which are probably watching and waiting for a ballistic missile TEL or transporter erector launcher to pop out of a tunnel somewhere, which will then be struck. This is pure speculation on my part, but locals in Shiraz have made posts on social media indicating that they can visually see drones flying around overhead. So, that's my guess as to what they are doing. Hit the first wave of targets and while those strikes are ongoing, put ISR assets overhead to hopefully catch the Iranians trying to launch a ballistic missile and hopefully call in an airstrike on it before it's launched. Either way, it's a very dynamic situation. Things are changing by the minute and it's been a very busy morning so far. This afternoon, the Iranians announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, though at the present time it is unclear as to if they have the naval capability to enforce that. Some strikes have occurred at their naval facilities on the Persian Gulf. However, that's really hard to confirm at the moment. Commercial vessels appear to slowly be getting the word to avoid the strait and the White House a few minutes ago just recommended all commercial shipping to avoid the area for a while as the war continues. Around the entire Middle East, several other nations have become involved, officially making this a region-wide war. Following the Iranian strikes in other Middle Eastern nations, the Saudis have announced that they will be willing to conduct strikes of their own in Iran as well. So, now the Saudis are playing ball and will probably begin flying bombing sorties against the Iranians as well. In the Horn of Africa, the Houthis in Yemen have announced that they will also begin targeting American vessels in the region once again in response to the strikes. Which, if these remarks are serious and not just the usual rhetoric, could mean that the United States might be facing a multi-front war such that it is. None of these forces pose a particular risk to the US Navy in the region, but again, if we crack open our history of warfare textbooks, we remember that the purpose of a disadvantaged adversary opening up an additional front is mostly to pull resources from another front. The Houthis don't really have the resources to do much, but what they can do is hit Israel with their missiles, which they proved last year. And a destroyer that has to hang out in the southern Red Sea to provide this missile defense is a destroyer that can't be elsewhere. So, the Houthis might not be that combat effective, but they are certainly combat effective enough to divide American resources throughout the region. In Lebanon, similar efforts are underway as Hezbollah takes advantage of the fray to launch their standard short-range rockets into Israel. The Iron Dome has been busy all morning intercepting missiles and drones both from Hezbollah and the Iranians. It is also interesting to note that the timing of the first strikes is significant. Daytime bombing raids are unusual in this case and provide some insight on the targeting efforts at large. Most of the time deliberate targeting efforts are carried out during POD or period of darkness, usually in the middle of the night. This is for two main reasons. Usually, you know where the bad guys are located and also where civilians are located, which is usually in bed in their homes. So, bombing missions of this scale are usually conducted at night so as to reduce overall civilian casualties. There is also the side benefit of the concealment the darkness provides. In this case, the very first explosions were reported in Tehran just after 8:00 a.m. local time. Though it is speculative, to me this indicates that the Americans and Israelis were trying to catch Iranian troops at their posts or that sometime sensitive trigger was tripped, probably regarding the strikes targeting senior leadership, which is not surprising but interesting to note. So, moving forward, all things considered, what is the actual plan here? Well, to be honest, we don't really know for sure. The White House really just went full send with their largest air campaign since the surge in Iraq in 2003 without really fully explaining the why behind it all. So, as of President Trump's address this morning, this whole thing is about regime change and openly encouraging a revolution. In terms of how this seems to work out, it's anyone's guess. The US could simply bomb all military hardware in the country and just walk away and leave the smoking crater for the civilians to deal with, which certainly seems like that's the plan right now. Right now, it looks like the general plan is just to bomb everything and not really care about any power vacuum that might arise if and when the Ayatollah and his government falls. Because as of right now, this is not a certainty. Israeli controlled media aside, there are no reports on the Ayatollah's whereabouts or what his status is. The US bombed his official residence in Tehran during the first wave of strikes. However, he hasn't been living there for some time. He's probably been in his bunker to the north for several days at least, and there are no indications of whether or not we actually hit that site just yet. But again, until more information comes out, it's impossible to know where the Ayatollah is at the moment. On the home front, as a result of the regional war that has broken out in the Middle East, threats within the American homeland are elevated. I know that everyone is concerned about the potential for sleeper cell activation throughout the United States right now. This has been a very infamous threat for many, many, many years. However, this is also always an unknown risk that we can't really do a lot with in terms of mitigation. If the sleeper cells are real and they are activated, there's not a whole lot the average American can do about it. It would make sense for these cells to exist. Surely they do. But in terms of how many and where they're located, it's going to be impossible to know for sure. The first time the United States has struck at the Iranian nuclear program, nothing really happened. No sleeper cells were activated throughout the US. So, there is some credence to the argument that this is kind of an overblown threat. However, once again, we're in a very dynamic and very dangerous world these days. So, it would be wise to just consider that yeah, there are probably some at least lone wolf attack plans out there just waiting to go into the operational phase. More broadly, the threats that are presented by various factions within the United States are a lot more clear. It is far, far more likely for a far left Reddit tier terrorist to conduct a lone wolf attack over this due to their own radicalization, rather than a deliberately planted sleeper cell agent. From my wheelhouse, this is the risk that is worth focusing on and being aware of. There are a lot of crazy people out there, people who desperately want to use violence for some political cause, even one that they might not have any skin in themselves. Other than more kinetic terrorist attacks, protests and demonstrations are likely to break out in the usual places. And this morning, the London Metro Police announced several pop-up demonstrations taking place throughout the city, which have caused travel disruptions for many people. It's Saturday and perfect protesting weather throughout most of the United States and Western Europe, so that's probably going to be on the menu for the next few days as air strikes continue. This is most certainly not a one-and-done strike on nuclear facilities like we've seen before. This campaign will last at least a few days. Similarly, in the US, we will probably see protests break out in the short term with more organized efforts continuing as the war drags on. Once again, I want to be explicitly clear that we do not know the true scale of this operation. This could be a drop in the bucket or it could transition to a much more substantial campaign. We just don't know. This has not been explained to us by our government and we're just having to watch this like everybody else. The next satellite passes of the region are a few days away and as of right now, the US government has not stated which sites were struck, so we're just going to have to wait. So, that's the situation as it stands right now. Not a whole lot to go on, but hopefully we will at least get some answers as time goes on. We've been expecting this for a long time, but even still, I know that a lot of people aren't feeling super great about this right now, which I understand more than you could possibly imagine, but we'll get through it all right. No matter what happens overseas or here at home, it is our responsibility to do the best we can, no matter what. So, stay frosty, keep your head on a swivel, and do your utmost to help improve the world around you in whatever little way you can. For tracking these events in as real time as I can manage, I plan to be constantly updating all of my mapping products throughout the next few days. It takes a lot of time because every single point has to be geolocated and corroborated if possible, but we'll get there. If you want to follow along with the work I do, there are many different ways to visualize my work. The most popular will probably be the dashboard I have created, but if you want to filter events by type or date, or if you want to create your own sort of dashboard arrangement, just viewing my online common intelligence picture is probably what you want. And of course, if you are a user of A-TAC, I also publish KMZs of all of this, which can be easily imported as needed. So, that's all I have for today. I will hope to provide more information in a standard wire report as it becomes available, but that might be a while if the US is bombing targets throughout the next few days. But in any case, we'll give it a try. So, thank you all for watching. Thanks for sticking around, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

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

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for March 23rd through the 29th, 2025. As the title indicates, today I'm going to spend most of the time talking about some issues around the globe that are going to be of strategic concern, indications and warnings of impending conflicts and so on. So let's start off with the slide that I hope will not get very much use, which is essentially a World War II tracker. Staying at the very wave top level, let's briefly touch on some of the issues that have come to light over the past week. First of all, in North America, the trade disputes have continued between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, largely without very much notice. There have been some developments over the past week or so, just tit for tat things back and forth between the United States and Canada. A lot of rhetoric, a lot of shouting back and forth, but nothing really uh to sink our teeth into with regards to how this might affect the economy. Once again, we know that the economic situation globally is really just kind of in shambles at the moment and kind of hanging by a thread in many regards. So, it's hard to tell if a diplomatic spat between the United States and Canada or between the US and Mexico is is actually resulting or translating into higher prices at the grocery store. There are just too many things going on with the economy that could be contributing to high prices or low prices or low availability or logistics issues. It's just too hard to to nail down to one specific data point. This week, the White House has also increased the rhetoric with regards to Greenland, making it very, very likely that the United States will obtain Greenland in some form or fashion. Of course, many Greenlanders are quite upset about this uh because they may end up paying higher taxes than they already do and other reasons as well. Greenland is a very complicated diplomatic zone. It's not really an independent nation. Technically, it's legally counted as a county in Denmark and it is uh treated as such. However, the Kingdom of Denmark has really given a lot of autonomy to Greenland, but not autonomy with regards to things like diplomatic relations. So, for instance, the Greenlanders can't get together and make a treaty with another nation. That's going to be kind of like an international thing. So, really, Greenland has just kind of been left to their own devices. However, some of the rhetoric from Danish politicians has really taken a very interesting turn uh in that a lot of Danish politicians have brought up the the essential fact that the United States more or less already does own Greenland. We have freedom of maneuver there. We can do whatever we want to in Greenland. They've already granted permission going way back to the 50s in the Cold War, right? So, just shooting from the hip, it seems like a lot of the Danish politicians are taking the perspective of so what I mean, you guys already own it. Like, what do you what more do you want? Clearly, the United States wants a little bit more formalization of of Greenland, either becoming a state or a protectorate or a territory in some way, probably to increase things like missile defense. I mean, we already do that. We already have a sub substantial Arctic presence in Greenland, but it seems like we're we're trying to formalize that a little bit more with regards to the diplomatic status of that. So, this will be interesting to see as time goes on. But again, in the context of a large superpower annexing a historic territory that they've had influence over for a long period of time. This is a little bit ironic in in the grand scheme of things as we can see uh moving forward. Moving over to the United Kingdom, our friends across the pond have had a a bit of a rough week uh with regards to both domestic and international issues. Domestically, the United Kingdom is facing a formalization of their two-tier legal system to allow minorities and other protected classes of citizen to have formally lighter sentences. So a judgment was was passed by or or a policy was passed by the sentencing council of the United Kingdom to formalize lighter sentences for certain protected classes of citizen mostly uh along racial demographics. So this has obviously been a very very hot button issue over the past few years really or even decades if you if you want to go back that far. But recently this has become a very palpably difficult topic for the United Kingdom over the past few weeks. So hopefully they will get things ironed out, but it's not looking good for the formalization of a two-tier justice system in the United Kingdom. Internationally, the United Kingdom is still pressing the uh deployment of British soldiers to Ukraine uh for some reason. This is a personal initiative of Kier Starmer, the prime minister. However, there are a lot of citizens who do support this idea. A lot obviously do not, but a lot still do. So online, it's kind of hard to determine how popular of an idea this is. I can't imagine it being very popular among citizens, especially considering how the war has gone so far and we are kind of at the 11th hour at this point with the war in Ukraine. But we shall see how it goes. Hopefully, this is not something that is going to actually come to fruition, but it may. I I don't actually know. Of course, most nations in NATO have sent troops to Ukraine in some form or fashion, either as quote unquote advisers or special forces or things like that. But in terms of deploying an actual conventional army in any force uh not in a training role but to fight that is a lot different of a story. So we will have to see how that works out but hopefully it's just rhetoric at the moment. Speaking of Ukraine uh situation in Ukraine has not gotten any better. It some may say it's gotten worse uh with regards to a diplomatic situation. However, like I pointed out in the wire, a lot of positions are becoming a little bit more clear. So many people can say that's probably a good thing for all the world leaders to involve to kind of you know cut the nicities and let's just get right to the meat of the matter. That seems to be where uh Vladimir Putin is at especially at the moment. So Putin has made it very clear that he wants regime change. He's not going to be making a deal with Ukraine in any form or fashion as long as Zalinsky has a future uh as Ukraine's leader. Of course for many people who are on the pro- Ukraine side of things, they're going to say, "Well, of course he's going to say that. Of course he wants Zinsky gone." However, Zalinski and Ukraine, as as shocking and challenging as it may be to hear for some, uh Ukraine does not really have a say in in their future at this point, this is most certainly a conflict between the United States and Russia. And negotiations are going to be conducted between the United States and Russia without very much input from Ukraine. So, it's really all up to whether the United States wants to keep Zalinsky on board uh and protect him for a bit of time or if they want to horse trade around a little bit and see what they can get from Russia because it really as as bad as it sounds, Ukraine really doesn't have a say in any of this. So, this is uh all on what the United States will see fit and I guess we'll have to see what the United States says because um Russia has made their position quite clear at the moment and uh we'll see how close we can get to some kind of deal over the next couple of weeks. Moving down to Africa, I wanted to touch on the conflict in the Congo. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, there's kind of a civil war going on there now. I think we can safely call it a civil war. And really, it's not going super well. So, uh, the leadership of the Congo, I'm not sure if you could call them democratically elected or not, but the leadership of the Congo, the formalized government of the Congo, has essentially just kind of cut all pretenses and invited the United States to come in and eliminate the M23 rebels. In exchange, the United States gets to keep all the minerals in the Congo or some sort of mineral deal. So, at least that's a little bit of a refreshing change of place. Purely a mercenary style uh conflict. I very strongly doubt the United States will take up the Congo on on that. Nobody really has the appetite to go into subsaharan Africa at this point, but I found it kind of interesting that warlords and democratically elected warlords are really just kind of openly vying for power at this moment and not really going with any pretenses for what they're trying to do. So at least that's kind of interesting. Moving over to the Middle East and the South China Sea, there are a significant amount of developments going on, which I will touch on in just a moment. But essentially, the United States is staging an awful lot of resources throughout various bases in the Middle East, most notably at the very infamous CIA black site at Diego Garcia and also at the more well-known base Aluded in Qatar. So, we'll get into that in a moment. And also in the Far East, the Chinese naval activity has been increasing with regards to Taiwan. They're conducting a lot of drills, a lot of flyovers, a lot of maritime exercises, things like that. So, something to keep an eye on. Not a whole lot of uh indicators for an imminent invasion of Taiwan, but China is most definitely uh interested in that for sure. And they are making moves uh to continually prepare for that as they have been doing for well over a decade now. So, that's really the global situation at the moment. Let's get into it a little bit more specifically and let's start by taking a look at a few data points that I have been updating throughout the week. The more astute of you may have noticed that I uh throughout the week have been updating the various Tesla vandalism or incident attack sites on the SIPOP map, the ArcGIS map project that I'm working on. I know it seems rather underwhelming. Uh however, these are the Tesla vandalism incidents that have occurred that I have been able to find and geollocate with pretty good accuracy. I think over the past couple of months, I didn't go back uh to 2024. This is really just this year, so January until essentially now. Most of these it's very hard to geollocate because when someone posts a video of their Tesla being keyed or set on fire or something, most of the time people do not uh actually post where it is. So I have to spend a few hours trying to geollocate where a lot of these attacks are taking place. So, so just as a reminder, generally speaking, when it comes to the world of, you know, open- source intelligence, really, it's it's going to be very very hard. It makes it makes it very hard when people post a video and say, "Look at this. This is outrageous." And then they don't tell me where it is. Uh it would be very very helpful if there was a street address or something because most of the time they're just posting like, "Oh, okay. Well, there was a Tesla that got keyed in Kansas City." And then I have to go and find where it took place. So, it's hard to find a lot of these sites, but uh I will continue updating this tracker. Really uh I I don't want to uh over focus on this too much because really this is more along the lines of a low inensity conflict kind of thing. However, this is a way for me to kind of demonstrate some of the uh tools that I have and more importantly build templates for myself for later. So, so please don't think that uh I think this is a a hugely World War II level concern for me. No, no, no. It's it's certainly not. Um it's it is a concern. Obviously, vandalism incidents are a specific kind of low-intensity conflict that I think will personally continue on in the future. But right now, this is really just an exercise for me to uh document some of these things because it's an easy data point to analyze and feed in uh to a create layers on my own and then push those to the web map. So, when it comes to the main battle tracking map, the main SIP cup map, uh I will keep the I will keep this data flowing and try to document this as best I can because as far as I know, there isn't one central repository for for all of this data, but you can download it as an Excel spreadsheet. I think I'll have to double check that from from the website, but oh, and also I forgot to mention, so when you click on each one of these pucks on the map, you can click each one of these icons and uh see a clickable link for the source. It may not work on your phone. I mean, it should work on phones, but it maybe a little bit easier on a desktop browser or something like that. So, this is just kind of again a reminder of some of the more data intense things that I'm working on. Again, I'm not really sure how helpful it is for everyone, but getting the the workflow down pat on my end is is a little bit more helpful for me. Uh, and I think it may it may bear fruit in due time. Same thing with the dashboard. Uh, when it comes to this specific data set, like, you know, Tesla attacks by day and type, I can actually graph that. So again, I'm I'm really not sure if this is helpful or useful for anybody. It's probably going to appeal to not that many people, but uh that's okay. But for the dashboard product that I have, as we can see, I can put charts in there uh and move things around and change things up. This may change by the time the video comes out, but as we can see, the very rudimentary uh primitive chart that I can bring into the map to analyze these data points. It makes it a little easier to see that attacks are increasing. these vandalism attacks and incidents are uh becoming a lot more frequent and a lot more each day when they do happen. So, but yeah, a little bit more helpful than just looking at a raw map. If we can actually take these data points and put them into a chart, this helps sort of build the story uh that we're trying to tell here. So, I have many many many more data layers uh that I'm working on right now that I have not published and pushed to the map yet. I hope to have a lot of that finished by this uh next week, but who knows? So you guys know um working with any kind of GIS system, it takes a very very long time to get anything done. But I will continue pushing on for those that uh find this stuff helpful. So moving over to Western Europe, I wanted to mention two incidents this week. Again, the terror attacks have continued. Unfortunately, it's already becoming a very hot year for that sort of thing. In Germany, there was a a sort of questionable event uh which is is it's not entirely certain if this was a terror attack or if this was more along the lines of just a a murder uh situation. The mainstream media is reporting that essentially a teenager was approaching a a vehicle checkpoint. Didn't have a license, was kind of joy riding around and he panicked and tried to turn around before he got to the checkpoint. Ended up ramming into a crowd of people. I'm not entirely certain if you would classify that as a traditional terrorism attack or if this was just a careless uh not really caring about anyone uh else around him kind of thing. Of course, in either situation, the driver took deliberate actions to harm people. However, it's the circumstances and context behind that are still up for debate. Of course, Germany uh really does try to take care of their criminals. So, it's really hard to find any sort of data on any criminal after any attack occurs. You're you're really lucky to get what you get. So, I don't expect to get any more details on this one, but I will definitely keep an eye out. Similar situation in the Netherlands where there was a mass stabbing. This was uh most certainly a more deliberate terror attack. There were five people stabbed in Dam Square in Amsterdam a couple of days ago. Once again, the Dutch really like to uh cover up the identity of the attacker, so we're probably not going to get a name or any status for a while. However, there are rumors circulating, and I want to stress these are rumors, but there are rumors circulating that the asalent was a Ukrainian refugee. We do have pictures of the guy. We have video of uh bystanders taking the guy down and detaining him at the scene. However, you I mean, you can't really tell uh from any of the stuff that that I've seen so far. But anyway, we'll have to see how this develops, but I don't really have high hopes for any kind of information to come out from this either. Now, moving over to the Indian Ocean, uh as many of you have kind of noted over the past week or so, there have been substantial strategic indications and warnings of a major impending military conflict. Now, I do not say that lightly by any means, but there have been up to nine B2 Spirit strategic bombers stationed at Diego Garcia. And as we can see from this exceptionally blurry and cloudy image, this is sentinel imagery from March 28th. So, we got really lucky and got a good uh well, not good, but a better than nothing Sentinel imagery. This is open source satellite imagery that can be downloaded by the general public. These are just screenshots from their website and we can actually manipulate the image on the website itself. So, uh, we can take a look at the false color. And if we take that screenshot and manipulate it just a little bit using very rudimentary tools, we can increase the contrast and increase the saturation. And we can see that there are possibly at least five for sure, but possibly six B2 Spirit bombers parked on the south parking apron at the uh, airfield on Diego Garcia. So, what does this mean? What's the bottom line here? Well, very generally speaking, uh, for deployments of bombers usually mean we're going to bomb something. And B2 spirits because they are stealth bombers. These are could also be B-21 raiders. It's hard to tell. You can't really determine the difference in this imagery. Uh, however, generally speaking, deploying these types of assets, stealth bombers instead of B-52s, stealth bombers being deployed to Diego Garcia is a major indicator, a very significant indication and warning of a war with a nearpeer asset. So, what does this mean? Well, really what I'm trying to say is if we narrow down the potential adversaries in this region that uh B2 spirits would be used for, what I'm trying to say is that we don't necessarily need stealth bombers to be dropping bombs in Yemen. We've been doing pretty good so far without uh any kind of stealth assets, but we probably would need stealth bombers to drop bombs in Iran. So, the bottom line is that this could very well be, again, indications and warnings. It's not proof, but this could very well be staging for an impending war with Iran. Once again, I do not see that lightly. I do not want to panic anyone too much, but I'm just giving you the straight dope here. And this is uh something we would see if we're going to go to war with Iran. A lot of people have mentioned maybe China as well. Uh I would disagree. Uh generally speaking, we would not be deploying assets to Diego Garcia specifically unless we're trying to target Iran because Iran the Iranian missiles and most of Iranian weapon systems are just conveniently out of range for Diego Garcia. And that's still a long flight. If we were going to go to war with China and we were trying to forward deploy assets for that, you guys can do the research uh to determine what we might do uh with regards to the three islands chain doctrine. This has been very well thought out over the past 40 50 years or so. And generally, if we were to see these bombers at Guam or somewhere in the Marshall Islands or even in the Philippines, I would say, yeah, okay, that's probably an indicator of something going on with China. But Diego Garcia for me means Iran. Now, thinking big picture here, just to cover all bases and, you know, make sure that we're all examining this from a higher level, you know, more even-handed perspective, this could very well be a continuation of essentially speak softly and carry a big stick doctrine. Though, in this case, it would be speak very loudly and carry a big stick as well. This could be posturing. It could be what we call in the business power projection. Move a lot of bombers around. Make sure the Russian and Chinese satellites get a real good look at them. make sure the Iranians are very well aware that we can, you know, strike their country with arguable levels of success, right? Could be that the single phone call can bring all these bombers home like nothing happened. Uh they don't have to stay there permanently. They are for deployed for a reason. They can all just tomorrow by the time this brief gets out, we could get a new satellite image and they're all gone. That's just the way aviation works. However, this is out of the norm. This is not something we normally do. And most notably, there has been absolutely zero communication about this from the White House and the Pentagon and no journalists have been asking about this at all. So, it kind of makes me a little bit more concerned that that nobody said, "Oh, there's a drill going on or an exercise." As far as I know, there isn't an exercise going on. I may be wrong about that. There may be an exercise, but this many assets is is a little bit uh interesting. So, again, indication of warning of war. I hate to be the bearer of bad news on that, but this is what we have so far. Now, just to add a little bit more credence to this idea, there have been an increase in uh fuelers strat tankers and general air-to-air refueler assets moving into Aluded air base. So, for anyone who spent some time at the deed, they know that Aluded air base is a very big uh regional hub for logistics, right? An aircraft landing at Alud is certainly not an indicator of very much, right? They have strata tankers stationed there normally as you can see in the the purple boxes. These are all of the assets that are on the ground right now as this as I'm recording this brief uh on the 29th of March. So, we can see that there are a lot of uh you know tankers uh refuelers that are stationed there normally. One thing to note, however, is that last night uh a flight of four KC46 Pegasus tankers took off from the United States and flew all the way to Aluded. So, there are four additional KC46s there, and that's a lot. That's a pretty big deployment of resources. Uh, and once again, just as a general strategic indication and warning, you don't typically need this many for a drill or an exercise. So, moving four tankers from the United States all the way over to the Middle East, where they already have plenty, uh, is again, it's an indication. I can't say for certain that this means things are about to kick off, but it's it's definitely um definitely an indicator. So, so I will definitely keep an eye out. Uh and uh I know a lot of aviation watchers are going to keep an eye out. Uh and I'm also going to keep an eye out for other indications that maybe point to there not really being much going on. For instance, another thing that you might want to keep an eye on are ship movements or have there been deployments of ma major navy assets. More carriers than usual departing uh port. And so far, nothing's out of the ordinary with regards to the Navy. So, clearly this is more along the lines of an Air Force kind of show going on right now. But yeah, it's not a good look. I hate to be the mirror of bad news again, but uh B2s don't move around that much. Uh they don't forward deploy. They're very expensive aircraft and they're very secret aircraft as well. So, we tend to not forward deploy them too much unless there's something serious going on. So, half a dozen B2s and a handful of refuelers making their way to the Middle East is uh not a really a good sign. But once again, hopefully this is just posturing. Hopefully, this is just a big exercise I didn't tell anybody about. Hopefully, this is nothing at all and next week we can all uh just kind of breathe a little bit easier. But right now, it's something to be certainly aware of for sure. Not like any of us can do anything about it, but it's definitely something to be aware of for sure. So, switching topics significantly, let's talk about the earthquake in Burma. For many of you who do not know, a very significant earthquake hit the nation of uh Myanmar or for those of us who like to go with the old ways, Burma along with Thailand. So, this was a very large earthquake. We can see that centered along a fault line here. You can just look at the map and see, yeah, that's a on a fault line there. So far, I've seen estimates that state that 17 million people are potentially in the affected area. Even though we're not hearing very much from Burma at the moment, we can see the devastation is quite significant. I don't know what's going to come of this. I don't know how many casualties there are going to be, but I right now the official count is something like 100, a little over 100 casualties, but we're seeing skyscrapers come down here or or being impacted in some way. So, I I just don't know uh how this is going to go, but I will uh continue doing research and updating in the wire throughout the next week as recovery efforts start to get going. One of the things that's going to be very challenging is communications. So, as many of you who have been following the war in Burma know, uh really the Myanmar government doesn't really exist. Uh the country is being run by a military juna or honta depending on how you wanted to pronounce it. So, it's being run by a military council and it's technically in a state of coup. There has been a civil war going on there or I guess an attempt at a revolutionary war going on there and internet access has been very unreliable. When it does exist, it's been censored. So, you know, they're blocking the internet access to a lot of these major cities in Burma. So, it's hard to determine what to do. In that context, I think that makes a rather unfortunate segue to the Ghostnet reports for this week. For those of you who don't know, I'm sorry I keep forgetting to mention what this is. And I'm sure a lot of you who have recently kind of uh tuned into these briefings, you probably don't know what this is. So, just a brief overview, the Ghostnet is an HF radio network that I've kind of established here. Really, it's just a communications plan. It's nothing that I've invented new. It's just a kind of a shared way of exchanging information using highfrequency radios or shortwave radios. Some of you have maybe seen some of my content on shortwave radio and and how if the internet goes out, if you know, we lose power. Shortwave radio is really the only way to communicate uh off-rid without using someone else's infrastructure over long distances. Again, shortwave or HF radio is a whole other animal from, you know, the classic Bow Fang or handheld walkie-talkie kind of thing. But, uh, this is the the best shot I think we've got for now. It's going to improve over time. I've got other elements coming in, but this is really just a shared last ditch kind of ad hoc plan that we've kind of thrown together over the past year or so. And I think it's quite helpful for exchanging a lot of information completely off-rid. So from my receiver here without using the internet at all, I can pick up reports such as this. So these are random people around the United States and some parts of Canada that have uh decided to uh share information. So, as we can see, there are a lot of uh reports on things like wildfires and uh people checking in to see how many stations they heard. It's a it's a whole thing. So, uh it's really complicated to kind of explain, but the general gist of it is that this is a very very important part of communicating in a grid down sort of situation where access to the internet might not be a guarantee. So, uh thank you all for participating. Those of you who transmit and share information, you will get out of the ghost net what you put into it. So, uh, for many of you who are listen only, that's perfectly fine. That's what it's kind of intended for. But really, the guys out there who are the allstars are the ones who are putting in the work to to get on the air and share information from their local area. So, this is your chance uh to to share as much information as you can and keep others around you informed in a very safe and secure and reliable manner. That's pretty much all I have for today. Thank you guys all for watching. Here are the sources as usual. There are a plethora of links in the description as always, so you can get access to all the maps, charts, and all that kind of stuff just by checking out the links below, especially things like my research notes, and my sources throughout the week. Those are primarily on my Obsidian page. So, once again, thank you guys all for watching. Thank you for your support. It's been a busy week, and it's going to be a busy summer. I can already tell many of you already could probably agree with me on that. So, hopefully we'll uh be able to do a lot of good work this summer. But for now, thank you for all of your support, and we will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shape.

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

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for November 16th through the 22nd, 2025. Crazy week like usual, but this time it's going to be a little bit shorter because a lot of the things that have happened this week have already covered in the wire reports throughout the week. So no need to rehash a lot of these things, but some things we can expand a little bit on and maybe get a little bit more clarity on what's going on with some of these events as we start getting into the holiday season. Getting right to it with the global strategic concerns this week. The main focus has been ICE operations or rather the significant resistance to ICE operations around the country. This is again a trend that has been going on for several months now. However, things are starting to get a little bit more heated as ICE operations continue to spread around the United States. Also, in the United States, all eyes are on the Somalian situation in Minneapolis this week, which have brought about a lot of details and situations and scandals that have been very much open secrets in the city for a very long time. But now many Americans are just now figuring out the scale at which a lot of the fraud is being committed in Minneapolis. So we'll get into that in a bit. Down south in the Caribbean, the situation really remains unchanged from last week. No big major updates there and no real uh indication as to whether or not the US is going to be conducting any kind of operation there or not. The White House seems to be kind of interested in doing some sort of diplomatic effort, but that could all be a smoke screen to move into the final stages of whatever military campaign they have planned there. Again, it's all speculation and not really that useful to keep harping on. So, we'll just play it by ear and see how it works out down there. Similar situation over in Eastern Europe. The peace talks continue between Ukraine, the United States, and Russia. The United States and Russia have been working out the details of various types of peace agreements over the past few days and months, but the general public has only really been granted just a few snippets here and there. So, there's really no conclusion that can be made either way. But the talks do continue and we're in kind of one of these cycles again where both sides seem to be kind of interested in finding some sort of common ground which is good. We have had this happen dozens of times before. So it doesn't really pay to get one's hopes up because in two weeks from now both sides may have a spat again and then they veer away from any kind of peace talks. But for now the situation is positive once again which is something that's probably a good thing. That's the situation globally for strategic movement. Again nothing significant to report on this front. Everything is basically where it was before. The Gerald Ford is still in the Caribbean Sea and is in the theater of operations of Southcom. So all players are on deck for if the United States wanted to do something in Venezuela, but time will tell. Moving to kinetic events for the United States this week. It has been quite busy, unfortunately. I am once again in the perpetual battle of trying to keep my maps updated with all of the events that are a little bit more significant than the average street crime. But throughout the United States, violent crimes continue as before. A lot of the very brutal events this week have come from public transit. As one might expect, the two high-profile attacks that I've focused on this week are the immolation attack that occurred on the Blue Line train in Chicago and also the subway stabbings where random people have just been stabbed in the face in New York City on the subway system there. So in the United States, it's become quite clear over the past few years that from a riskmanagement perspective, public transit are death traps. So not everybody can avoid public transit. Some people have to use it uh for their job or just to get around because they don't have a vehicle or something like that. But never relax, that's for sure. Especially as we start getting into the big travel seasons where people are going to be moving around a lot, there's a lot more incentive to commit random acts of violence and just general street crimes, muggings, and things like that. So, something to be aware of as we move forward into the winter months. On the other side of the coin, this week, a lot of the violence has largely centered around immigration issues, mostly when it comes to uh ICE raids in a particular area. Continuing the trench from last week, Charlotte has experienced again more unrest, mostly up and down Central Avenue, which is hosted to a lot of very open and very brazen uh immigration problems. The past few days, the Charlotte Observer and a lot of the Charlotte based media have really just been focusing on publishing tearyeyed interviews of some illegal immigrant business owner who's so upset that they had to close down their business while ICE is in their area. Just kind of completely glossing over the fact that illegal immigrants are in fact criminals. That's just a fact of the matter, right? Everyone who is an illegal immigrant in this country made a conscious decision to break the law. So, you know, that's kind of the way that it is, but we all know how it goes. Charlotte is a absolute dystopian hell hole. So, you tend to get things like this uh very large community watch efforts, very big and very wellunded groups that are uh doing everything they can to openly say, you know, we encourage people to commit felonies. We're literally an occupying force. One of the main agencies, the SMRA organization in North Carolina that has been kind of active for a lot of these immigration issues. They openly say on their website like we're trying to dominate. We're trying to take over. We are trying to eradicate everyone who is not us. Right? That's exactly what they say on their own website. So, you know, you got to you got to take these things at face value. Sometimes if someone tells me that, I'm inclined to believe them. So, that kind of unrest has been more or less a commonality there. It's not really been that effective. uh the resistance to ICE nationwide hasn't really stopped any ICE raids at all. I mean, that's just kind of the way that it is, but it's only a matter of time before ICE are starting are going to have to start making decisions on where to go based on the resistance they're going to see. Especially considering we now have more routine everyday garden variety terrorism plots that just kind of come and go and nobody ever really does anything. Such as the case in Virginia this week, in which case a pair of brothers, one of which is still currently employed as an assistant principal at a high school in Virginia. Both of them planned to travel to Las Vegas to conduct shootings against ICE. They're treating it like it's some sort of sporting event, right? They're trying to hunt ICE agents for sport. Uh, that's the kind of way these people think nowadays. As disturbing as that is, they just talk about it like they're discussing the weather, which is exactly how they got caught. So, like I wrote in the wire, the way that these guys got rolled up was probably the dumbest possible way ever. The story that has been told by the authorities at least is that an offduty cop was uh eating dinner next to these guys at the next table over from them at a restaurant in Virginia Beach and he overheard them talking uh about their planned killing spree of ICE agents just kind of out in the open during dinner. you know, one thing led to another, investigation continued on, and they kind of confessed to it, right? So, for those who think, well, that sounds a little sketchy. Maybe the cops lying, you know, that's a very that's a very good possibility. I'm sure it'll come out in court. I'm sure that a very close examination of their digital devices will show that they had planned to commit these sorts of crimes because at least one of them had already purchased a plane ticket. They both had purchased firearms and selected rounds that they thought were best for penetrating body armor. I mean, they're kind of stupid, but you know, still quite serious. So, there's all that. But this is one of those things to just kind of be aware of. And to be honest, none of this is really that surprising. I lived in Virginia Beach for about a year or so, several years ago. Uh, and I can tell you that if you were to sit down and, you know, eat a meal at any restaurant in Virginia Beach, the chances of you hearing someone planning a and plotting a violent crime, especially from a more liberal perspective, is extremely high. Okay? So, it's not that hard to imagine. It's like going to an Antifa cafe, you know, in Portland or Seattle and overhearing somebody, you know, wanting to take a shot at Charlie Kirk. You're going to go to these, you know, strongholds of this kind of ideology and well, yeah, that's exactly what you're going to see. So, least surprising uh method of being caught ever, but it just kind of goes to show the grand scale at which this resistance to ICE efforts have have kind of carried on. And like I mentioned, and I've mentioned this several times, ICE is not going after people just for being illegal. This is probably a PR thing so that anytime some kind of, you know, mainstream media source or some kind of politician starts screeching about, oh, police brutality. Oh, you're being violent with this person. H, you know, and and they start yammering about that. The people running the ICE social media accounts can come back and say, "Oh, well, you know, sorry to hear that, but here's the guy we were arresting, and here's what he's charged with." And it's always something so horrific that you can't even you can't even say it in polite company. That's the kind of thing they're going after. So, something to keep in mind. people are going to be insane. It's just one of those things. But as we get into more of the holiday season, you're going to start to see probably more of this because well, more and more people are getting funding together, more and more agencies are starting to get better organized and things like that. So, as time goes on, resistance will increase. It won't decrease, it will increase, and they'll get a lot better at trying to protect violent criminals in various cities around the US. So, that's it for the nationwide kind of overview this week. Let's move down into the regions for a closer look at some issues this week. And technically, this first one is actually a nationwide issue still. There were a couple of cloud flare outages this week. There was a major outage on November 18th and a smaller outage again on November 20th that I'm not sure how how many people it affected, but the November 18th outage was the largest one. And I have seen some very uh speculative and unconfirmed numbers that it took down 20 to 25% of the entire internet. And the reason that it happened was very interesting. Cloudflare initially stated that they thought that it was a cyber attack and it still may be. It's one of those things that you're probably never going to get the truth on, but they initially thought it was a cyber attack, but then they revealed that it was actually a single file that quote suddenly doubled in size. Now, how that exactly happened, it's not clear at the moment. I'm sure we'll find out something later on, but that's the story they're going with. One single file was changed and it took down 20% of the internet. So for the non- tech nerds out there, yes indeed, our public internet infrastructure is being held together by uh some duct tape and string. And yes, changing a single file will in fact break a good chunk of the internet. So once again, this may end up being the result of malign action. It could be the result of incompetence. My guess is you're probably not going to find out either way. If it was malign action, you're probably not going to find out. They're not going to tell you the truth because, well, they don't want to look bad. the they don't want to give the hackers or the malign actors any kind of credence right so they're just going to kind of conceal that a little bit but also if it was incompetence right from their data centers in Mumbai or something you know they're not going to want to talk about that for various reasons but nobody wants to look bad nobody wants to talk about how vulnerable their systems are even though Cloudflare is a major company they're still not going to want to be honest with their their stakeholders so something to be aware of look you know the internet is breaking on a weekly basis at this point. So, having alternative communications plans is becoming a little bit more little bit more important with each passing day. But that's it for the tech stuff this week. Moving to North Carolina for a moment. Like I said, the resistance to ICE operations in Charlotte is pretty high. But the ICE operation in Charlotte is actually not that large. They've only arrested a couple hundred people, which is just peanuts compared to the number of people they could be arresting. Right. Meckllinburgg PD is of course not doing anything. They've been given the order to stand down. So ICE agents have they don't have local police protection because the cops want harm to come to them uh in their city. So same story as always, same story all the the places where these ICE agents are going, that's just the way that it is. So risks are pretty high. And one of the more dangerous things with these ICE raids to consider for the average person, right? Even if you're not really concerned about some of the more highlevel nationwide issues, these ice raids are doing a couple of things. And in Charlotte, they've done one thing in particular, which is to show the actual organic population of Charlotte, just how many people are in their city that are not from here. They're not citizens. And they have created a lot of infrastructure. Central Avenue is kind of the main drag in Charlotte, or at least a good part of it. And there's a lot of restaurants. There are a lot of businesses. There are a lot of uh entities. And it turns out all of them have kind of shut down due to immigrants being there, right? People are now doing exactly the same thing that is in every other city. They find that ice is in town. Guess what? Traffic goes down. Suddenly you don't have gridlock. You don't have rush hour. You try to go shopping. Suddenly the grocery stores are empty. You know, and it's like you try to think there's no way there's no way there are this many people here. But the daily life for people has proven this. You know, people just living their daily life. They suddenly realize, wait a minute, this is how many people were illegal in my area. So yeah, Charlotte has kind of proven that. Same thing with all the other states because Charlotte is not one of those cities that you tend to think of when you think of a huge illegal immigrant presence, but it's it's true. I mean, it really is. Every major city in the US is like that. Doesn't matter how big or how small, there are a lot of illegal immigrants in the United States. Turns out that it's probably a lot more than what people think. So, that's something to keep in mind. Also in North Carolina last night, I wanted to mention it uh today because it just happened. There was a mass shooting at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Concord, which ironically is just outside Charlotte. It's like a little suburb of Charlotte. Right up front, this appears to be kind of a gang thing because they released the names of at least two of the suspects. The first suspect goes by the name Nasir Ahmad Bostik, and the second suspect is Kievon Rashad Bostic. So, they sound like their relatives, same surname, right? The third suspect was unnamed, but the local PD basically says this was a case of mutual combat. Two groups started shooting at each other, so maybe a gang thing, maybe a tribal thing. Hard to say. Concord is kind of a small town on the edge of a big town. So, it tends to be more of a sort of quaint, highincome area, but these kinds of violent attacks are starting to occur and injure bystanders even in some of the more uh affluent areas around the country. So, not a new thing by any means, but it's going to continue as we start getting into the crowded season. So, but that's it for North Carolina. Let's move over to the meat of the matter this week, which is the Midwest, the great state of Minnesota and the happenings in Minneapolis. So, for those who live in Minneapolis, quite literally, this is the least surprising bit of news they have seen all year. But the Somali, turns out, are a little bit of a problem in Minneapolis. And this week, there have been two levels of widespread and institutional corruption involving potentially billions of US tax dollars, all centered around the Somalian community in Minneapolis. So, the first scandal was the feeding our future scandal, which occurred some time ago, but now more and more people are being indicted. This was widespread fraud uh from all levels involving a sort of soup kitchen, food bank, food pantry kind of uh arrangement. But it turns out it was all just fraud. Uh, so we'll get into exactly the media matter, how it worked out, but this is the earlier scandal. So just for clarification, the feeding our future scandal that is occurring in Minneapolis right now is older. It occurred some time ago. It's just more and more people because there's more spotlight on it now. More and more people are being indicted. I think they're up to 76 people in indicted right now so far for this uh hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fraud in Minneapolis. But it occurred some time ago. So that is the stage being set for the next scandal which has come to light over the past few weeks really which is the autism services department. So I put together this graphic to help us kind of understand exactly how this this scam works because it's not particularly brilliant. It's a pretty low IQ effort to be honest, but it makes up for that in its brazeness and the fact that it worked uh for such a long period of time and continues to work to this day. So this particular scandal, the one that we're focused on right now, the Autism Services Department scandal, involves Somalians having children and then of course registering them, you know, with social security numbers. And one of the things that they also do in terms of just like a matter of recourse for just having a kid, you know, is to get them diagnosed with autism. So they will go to specific Somalian doctors, which are known throughout the Somali community for just pencil whipping autism diagnosis. You walk in, get the paperwork, walk out. That's the way that this diagnosis system works. Once that kid gets diagnosed with autism, the parents can then enroll that kid in various social programs. They can sign up for a whole plethora of welfare products and things like that due to their kid having autism, right? So, we're talking things like medical care, daycare, special education programs, all this kind of thing, right? In some cases, cash payments, in some cases, extra financial resources. There's a lot, right? There's a reason why it's so hard to understand the the welfare state in the United States because it's intentionally complicated. It's not just one program. It's not just one check. In many cities, specifically at the city level, there are a lot of programs where you just walk up and get something, right? And it's hard to say exactly how much is being used. So, they take advantage of that. Turns out a lot of these clinics, a lot of these daycarees, a lot of these special education programs, a lot of these social programs that are designed for children with autism didn't actually exist, right? They were fraudulently saying that these kids were enrolled, the kids either uh did not exist or the program did not exist. And you might be thinking, well, how on the same hill can they get away with this fraud for so long? Because surely surely there are auditing programs at each level, right? And you're absolutely correct. there are audits of government programs, especially when it comes to things like, you know, welfare stuff. However, it turns out that a lot of the people conducting the welfare uh audits were Somalian, okay, and in on it, right? So, that's kind of how it works. You find out that, okay, this like learning academy ABC or whatever is located on the corner of this street and that street and then, you know, the auditor drives by and finds out that's actually a liquor store. Like, there's nothing here. There's no daycare here. There's no clinic here. But on paper, it's there. And in the Senate and in the House, in Minnesota, they're allocating funding for it. And the place doesn't actually exist or like it's an empty lot. Like the there's like a mailing address, but it doesn't go to anywhere. That's the level of fraud that was happening. It started as more lower level stuff like people getting fake diagnoses for their kids and then enrolling them in programs they didn't need and then that money was getting uh kicked back to various levels of the community, right? But now it's expanded to just be straight up blanket fraud, right? It's sort of like the PPP scandal from the COVID era, if you want to think of it in those terms. And kind of like how you can go to that website and search for the names of the businesses that got small business loans. And the and the business name, like the no kidding business name is something like give me a Hellcat LLC or something like that. And it's like, oh my gosh, this fraud is just so blatant and so open. So that's kind of the general overview of how this works. is just straight up fraud. And it's really, really bad fraud, too. Like, it's just not very well concealed at all because it doesn't need to be because everyone involved from the community leaders to the politicians to even the governor, right? Nobody can touch this issue because if they point out Somali crime, they lose a Somali vote. And if they lose a Somali vote, they lose the state's vote. That's just the way that it is. One of the reasons why immigration is such a bigger concern on an economic front is due to two words: remittance payments. So one of the things that happens is everybody along this this process gets a cut. The doctor gets a cut. The parents get a cut. All these social workers get a cut. The social programs get a cut from all this money that just appeared in bank accounts, right? They're linking their actual personal bank accounts to like, you know, federal and state aid, right? So it's not like they're trying to hide, right? But one of the things they do is they immediately send that money back home to Somalia. And here is where the nationwide importance comes in. It's a lot. The numbers are saying that it's possibly $1.7 billion. Somalia is technically a failed state, so they're not a nation state. But you can think about it like this. The Somalian population in one American city, Minneapolis, is sending more money back to that country than is earned in that country alone. So that's kind of a big deal, right? And one of the reasons that people have kind of focused on this is because of what's going on in Somalia. Somalia again is not a nation state. They are a failed state. And it turns out warlords kind of run the country. So how are they getting this money back to Somalia? Because it's not like you can just deposit money into a bank account and it just appear there. I mean I guess that you could do that but what are they doing mostly? Hala. They're doing the Hala network. I have a whole video on the Hala network system if you want to check that out from a while ago. But the short version is that it's a complicated way of sending money from one place to another without governments knowing and without taxes being taken out. The exception of course is that there are hala brokerage fees. So think of it like Western Union but for the Muslim population of the world. It's not exclusively an Islamic thing but it did kind of uh gain a lot of popularity there which is why you mostly see it in uh Muslim countries. So interesting way of sending money. It's not bad in and of itself except for when it's used for criminal endeavors, right? And one of the criminal endeavors is the fact that a lot of the hala brokers, as in almost all of the hala brokers in Somalia, are actually members of al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab is a very infamous terror group throughout Somalia and Northern Africa at large. They're very famous for being extremely brutal and very warlordike. They have their origins in al-Qaeda, as with most insurgent groups throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. However, they're more akin to ISIS. A lot of the times you'll see them using ISIS flags. They're also kind of similar to AQAP or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It's one of those things. They're kind of their own thing. So to say that they're like another terror group is probably disingenuous because they're really their their own sort of thing. But yeah, they do have their origins in a few different contradictory groups, right? Like ISIS and al-Qaeda don't really work that well together, but this group kind of has their foot in either one of those groups. But anyway, I digress. the United States, specifically the taxpayers of Minneapolis, the taxpayers of Minnesota, paying these guys the bulk of their salary because they're allowing the Somalians in Minneapolis to send money back to Somalia through halala brokers which end up in the hands of al-Shabaab. Well, that's just not a great look, now is it? Remember TIA, this is Africa, right? So, they don't need a whole lot to be very effective, right? So to us, $1.7 billion, I mean, that's still a lot of money in American terms, but $1.7 billion being sent back to Somalia, that is a substantial fighting force. In terms of insurgent groups, you can do a lot with $1.7 billion in Somalia. You can definitely do a lot with that. So, of course, how much of that money is exact is is going straight to Al-Shabaab. How much of a fee they're taking, it's going to vary. You literally can never know. It's all done via handshake and cash. All 1.7 billion is probably not going into the hands of Ashbab. It's probably buying a whole lot of flat screen TVs in Moadishu. But but in terms of how many AK-47s and mortar rounds is buying, I don't know. Either way, it's not a good look. And this is why President Trump as of this morning before I started recording this, I saw that the White House has ended the temporary protected status TPS status for the Somali in Minneapolis is now terminated. So that's a very very strong development. It probably hints to the growing concerns that have been, you know, slowly mounting over time, but yeah, we'll see how it all works out. But a very fascinating look at at how some of this fraud is occurring on a gargantuan scale. And rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, Minneapolis is not the only place this is occurring. I would bet my last dollar that the same exact thing is happening with other terror groups, with other communities that are popped up around the United States as well. So, it'll be kind of fun to see how that works out over the next few days and weeks as people realize that uh it's not just the Somalians doing this. It's other groups, too. So, we shall see. So, that's all I've got for today. Let's roll it up with the intercepted ghost net reports. It has been a busy week for the ghost net. I've got a lot of people talking, a lot of traffic back and forth, a lot of very interesting uh exchanges of information. It's doing very good. We're doing good this time of year. It's uh nice and pleasant. It's not hot and sticky anymore. So, a lot of people try to get out and uh take advantage of the weird solar weather to see how far they can get. One thing to remember though is that the Thursday night uh radioet is not the only one. Uh there are other times during the week that you can have the best possible chance of of success for uh longhaul shots. So, like for the United States to Europe or for Europe to Australia or so on and so forth, right? Thursday nights are generally for more America, North America, Canada kind of news sort of thing. Whereas Saturdays are for more of the longhaul thing because you have to for many of us who don't have these big gigantic, you know, permanently set up arrays, you've got to change your antenna around. Uh if you want to talk locally, you've got to have your antenna arranged one way, whereas if you want to try to get a long haul shot, you may have to change your antenna around. But that's that's the reason for that. So, radio stuff complicated. I know. Uh it'll get easier with time, but just wanted to remind everybody that yeah, there are multiple times throughout the week that you can uh meet up. It's not just Thursday nights. Uh even though the Thursday night one is definitely where most people tend to show up. So, dozens of people tune in every week. It's always good to to see that, especially with all the Cloudflare outages, right? It makes it easier for us to uh have a little bit more off-grid and resilient way of communicating just in case the war should happen and we lose all comms, right? So, that's what this is all about. So, and with that, that's all I have for today. Here are the sources as usual. And of course, you guys can get the u main uh sources from the horse's mouth from the Obsidian page where uh each source is listed by day. That is the link that I put at the end of every wire report wherever I cut and paste. I cut and paste these uh wire reports to like a dozen different places. Uh but every place should have one link, the one link that you can click to go and find all of the research that I have on uh anything I've done. So, all the sources are there for those of you who want to double check, cross-check, triple check, uh, anything that I say and do. So, thank you guys again for all of your support. I could not do it without you. We are certainly in the middle of another, uh, social media purge. So, analytically, the past couple of weeks, things have not done super well. So, again, I don't tend to focus on things like that. Analytics, I don't really care about to be honest. But, I have noticed that a lot of the stuff that I uh, push out doesn't really make it to that many people. So, Patreon is fine. uh you'll see pretty much everything that I have to say there. Uh but for things like social media, just be advised. You might not uh see some things that I'm posting, especially when it comes to like time-sensitive emergencies. That kind of thing tends to not get uh super wide traction. So, just something to keep in mind. You know, everything's manipulated these days, but I do really appreciate those of you who stick around and support me either way. So, that's all I've got. I'll stop talking now. But don't forget, we've got one more week until Thanksgiving. So, don't forget to take your turkeys out of the freezer and we'll see you next week.

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