//The Wire//2200Z February 25, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: MEXICAN TRUCKING UNION BEGINS LABOR STRIKE DUE TO CJNG AMBUSHING DRIVERS ON HIGHWAYS. AMERICAN FORCES CONTINUE SURGING INTO MIDDLE EAST AS NEGOTIATIONS LOOM. CUBAN FORCES KILL 4 AMERICANS IN SMALL BOAT DURING SKIRMISH IN CUBAN WATERS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: The surge of American forces into the region continues, with non-stop flights of C-17's and C-5 cargo aircraft transferring supplies into CENTCOM. Fighter aircraft movements continue as well, with another flight of F-22's departing the United States for Lakenheath overnight, to supplement the 12x F-22's which transitioned to the Middle East a few days ago. Analyst Comment: On the diplomatic front, negotiations between the United States and Iran are scheduled to take place tomorrow in Geneva. So far no real word how things might go, but if the prior negotiations are any indication, stalling for time will probably be a main goal of all parties involved. Caribbean: This afternoon the Cuban Embassy released a press statement confirming that 4x Americans were killed during an incident that took place in Cuban waters just north of Cayo Falcones. Cuban forces reportedly attempted to interdict an American speedboat, and when approached by Border Guard forces, the passengers onboard the vessel began shooting. The Cubans returned fire, killing 4x passengers and wounding 6x others. Analyst Comment: As this is a developing incident at the time of this report, nothing is known beyond the initial press release as posted by Cuba. No American agency or diplomatic post has commented on the situation yet, and the details of what happened are single-source reporting (from the Cuban government) at the moment. More information is expected throughout the evening as the situation develops. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In Mexico, the situation remains tenuous as clashes have continued between Cartel and Government forces over the past few days. Random roadblocks and skirmishes pop up sporadically around the country, which have made travel unpredictable for many throughout the region. Government forces have continued raids in the wake of the initial targeting of El Mencho. Yesterday, the Mexican government confirmed the death of El Tuli, El Mencho's Operations Chief, who was killed in a similar raid as his boss. Removing the OPs guy from the CJNG the day after El Mencho was killed probably stunted the response to the initial raid, however random ambushes continue on the highways, largely unabated. These ambushes usually seek to target large semi-trucks, which Cartel members use to block roadways via setting on fire. As a result, this morning, the Mexican Alliance of Transportation Organizations A.C. (AMOTAC, the largest trucking union in Mexico), declared a labor strike due to a total of six truck drivers being murdered in these ambushes throughout the country over the past two days. This strike has largely taken the form of truck drivers refusing to drive, with some even setting their own trucks on fire, before the cartel has the chance to do it. These types of labor strikes are common throughout Mexico, as highway robbery is a common threat throughout Latin America. Consequently, logistical problems are very likely nationwide throughout the next few days, as CJNG forces engage in the time-tested guerilla warfare tactics that made them famous. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2200Z January 22, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: STABBING ATTACK STRIKES GERMANY. TRUMP CONTINUES EXECUTIVE ACTIONS. WILDFIRE BREAKS OUT NORTH OF SANTA CLARITA IN CALIFORNIA.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Panama: As the increased rhetoric continues to put the spotlight on the small (but important) Central American nation, Panama has filed a formal complaint with the United Nations regarding President Trump's remarks regarding ownership of the Canal. Germany: This morning a stabbing attack was conducted on a daycare group of small children in the city of Aschaffenburg. One two-year-old child and one adult man were killed in the attack. The suspect has been identified as "Enamullah O.", an immigrant from Afghanistan who had a long police record of violent acts and mental illness, who was protected from deportation by government agencies (as Germany does not normally deport anyone to Afghanistan due to the logistical difficulty in doing so and a general government policy of protecting these individuals). -HomeFront- California: Earlier today the Hughes Fire broke out northeast of Santa Clarita, and as of this report has rapidly expanded to over 3,000 acres in size. Washington D.C. - President Trump continues to sign the previously-indicated plethora of Executive Orders, many of which have resulted in controversy (as expected). For instance, Trump's order to mandate all federal workers to physically return to their place of work has resulted in controversy from two main groups: Federal workers who want to continue tele-"work", and the citizenry who is becoming aware of how few federal employees were actually working in their offices over the past four years. Other controversy has emerged following the announcement of The Stargate Project, which is a conglomerate of commercial efforts to build AI infrastructure. AC: Considering the recent scandals with OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, and the highly suspicious death of Suchir Balaji (an OpenAI whistleblower who's death occurred right after his disclosure of crimes OpenAI was alleged to have committed), this project is interesting. Considering that this Stargate Project did not just originate out of the ether overnight, many further suspicions have been raised regarding Balaji's death. At the time, it was hard to believe that an AI company would silence a whistleblower over the allegations that Balaji brought to the table. However, in hindsight we now know that major billion-dollar contracts with the US government were in the works at the time, which drastically increases suspicions of his death. Regarding the developing situation of the J6 prisoners, the slow-walking of their release continues for some. Of the remaining prisoners, approximately a dozen still have not yet been released as mandated by Presidential order, though the process is ongoing. Gulf Coast: Many states along the Gulf of America have reported power outages as significant snowfall took place throughout the region yesterday afternoon. From Louisiana to Florida, in some places over 12 inches of snow fell, which has broken many previous precipitation records. Vermont: More details have emerged regarding the murder of a Border Patrol agent on I-91 Monday. The suspects (a male and a female) have not yet been identified, but the male suspect is of German nationality, while the female is American. AC: This does not appear to be a case of routine immigration violence, and there probably is more to this story than meets the eye. Though the male suspect (now deceased) was originally stated to be an illegal alien, he appears to have at least entered the U.S. legally as he had a valid visa. However, he could have overstayed that visa, not enough information has been released yet regarding this case to know either way. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Somewhat interestingly, in the letter sent to the UN, Panama also vowed to conduct "an extensive audit" of the Panama Ports Company...the Hong-Kong-based company which handles most Canal logistics. This backhanded and somewhat flustered response from the Panamanian comptroller's office could be a tacit admission of what is fairly obvious...that China exerts significant control over Canal operations. This could also be an attempt to walk-back some of that Chinese influence in an attempt to placate the United States to avoid something more serious happening in the future. As one might expect, most of the information pertaining to the release of the J6 individuals is rife with rumor, with many details being hard to verify. Mainstream media is entirely ignoring this as expected, and the dissemination of information is largely being carried out by concerned citizens who are trying to coordinate each individual's release, get info from the families, etc. In many cases, the release of J6 prisoners has been completely routine. In other cases, unconfirmed rumor has indicated that federal agencies have had to step in by transferring prisoners out of the D.C. Central Prison facility, so they could be released by an agency actually willing to do so. Some individuals have claimed that the release of some prisoners is being intentionally delayed due to the prisoners having physical signs of mistreatment (which would be uncovered by a post-release medical examination, so provable or disprovable either way). Other claims are being made that various Non-Disclosure Agreements are being forced on the prisoners to prevent them from publicly speaking about their treatment at the facility (though this may be a standard part of release conditions, and not something specific to the J6 prisoners). Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z October 22, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: VIOLENT CAREER CRIMINAL GRANTED BOND IN CHARLOTTE AFTER SHOOTING TODDLER. MEMBERS OF SINGH FAMILY CARGO THEFT RING ARRESTED IN CALIFORNIA. PENTAGON REPORTS STRIKE IN PACIFIC OCEAN AS NARCO WAR SPREADS. NEW HAMPSHIRE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RETURNS TO BENCH AFTER ACCEPTING PLEA DEAL IN CRIMINAL CASE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Ireland: Unrest in Dublin continued throughout the night, with thousands of protesters and rioters taking up position outside the Citywest Hotel. Today, local observers noted significant fortification efforts being undertaken at the sprawling complex that encompasses the resort hotel, indicating much more protest activity is expected. Analyst Comment: The situation was made worse by the fact that most media organizations have only focused on the riot itself, and not the kidnap and rape of a child that started the whole affair. Compounding issues further was the observation of another load of migrants being bussed in to the area under heavy police protection. South America: The War Department has announced another kinetic strike on a narco vessel, bringing the total count to 8x vessels sunk so far this campaign. This vessel was not sunk in the Caribbean, but rather in the Pacific Ocean in a vicinity that has not yet been disclosed. 2x individuals onboard the vessel were killed during the strike. Analyst Comment: Regarding the previous strike on the Narco Submarine, details have come to light regarding the survivors of that strike. One individual was Columbian and was repatriated to Columbia after being severely wounded during the strike. This individual (who has not been identified) suffered severe wounds and might not survive. The other individual was from Ecuador and has been identified as Andrés Fernando Tufiño. He was repatriated to Ecuador, and was promptly released without any charges being filed as the government of Ecuador states that he committed no crime. This is quite a bold statement considering he was fished out of the ocean after his narco submarine filled with cocaine was sunk by an AC-130J gunship, but nevertheless this points to the seriousness of the situation. Venezuela, despite being the face of this campaign...is certainly not the only belligerent in this conflict, which is rapidly escalating into a region-wide war. -HomeFront- Wyoming: This morning the State Capitol building was evacuated after a suspicious package was discovered. Eventually EOD personnel rendered the device safe, and the building remained closed for the rest of the day. It is not clear at the moment if this device was an explosive device, but the investigation continues. Analyst Comment: This incident, while not uncommon, does provide a learning opportunity for all. A staffer initially discovered the device wedged in the state seal near the entrance to the building. Rather than leaving the suspicious package in place and immediately contacting authorities (as is the recommended procedure for the discovery of potential IEDs), the staffer picked it up and brought it inside the building. After tampering with the device for a bit, someone at some point realized that it might be an Improvised Explosive Device, and security was alerted, prompting the evacuation. New Hampshire: State Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi has returned to the bench after being indicted on seven counts pertaining to her attempting to use her position on the Supreme Court to influence her husband's criminal case. Analyst Comment: Her husband, Geno Marconi, was the head of New Hampshire's Port Authority when he was indicted on multiple counts of evidence tampering. This stemmed from an investigation into his misappropriation of state funds, as well as running an organized crime syndicate in which he used his position to grant preferential treatment for businesses which his family personally benefited from. As this investigation is still ongoing, many details are still secret. However, Justice Marconi herself was charged criminally due to her pressuring the Governor to drop the charges against her husband. As a result of this extortion attempt, she was charged on seven counts before she was given a sweetheart plea deal...a no-contest plea which resulted in a slap on the wrist (a minimum fine of $1,200 and zero jail time for her crimes). She not only has kept her position on the Supreme Court, but also returned to work on Monday after her fellow Justices on the bench voted unanimously to reinstate her license to practice law. California: Yesterday the San Bernadino County Sheriff announced the arrest of 12 members of the Singh family, who were allegedly engaging in cargo theft via their freight companies. This family was accepting shipping contracts to move freight cargo, but once the cargo was loaded on their trucks, they simply never delivered it to it's destination. Instead, cargo shipments were diverted to warehouses, where the goods were broken up and sold on the black market on an industrial scale. Analyst Comment: While this seems impressive, cargo theft has become increasingly common via freight companies themselves over the years. Stealing one TV is shoplifting, but stealing an entire semi truck full of TV's, and doing so under a legitimate company with a DOT number, and doing so over and over again because nobody cares to investigate...is something else entirely. The network is also a LOT larger than just a dozen people. Right now there are over 29,000 different trucking companies in the United States registered under the Singh name. North Carolina: Another would-be murderer has been granted bond following a weekend shooting in Charlotte. James Raeford was initially arrested after attempting to murder the occupant of a vehicle who he believed had parked too close to his vehicle. Raeford confessed to the attempted murder upon arrest, stating that he drew his firearm and attempted to kill the driver of that vehicle. In the ensuing small arms engagement, he ended up missing the driver and shooting the 3-year-old child in the passenger seat. Raeford initially had a secured bond set at $500,000 by Judge Keith Smith, an appointee to the bench by Roy Cooper. Judge Smith also set the conditions of his release to include the wearing of an ankle monitor. It is not clear as to if Raeford has posted this bond or not. The child wounded during the engagement remains hospitalized but is expected to survive. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: For context, over the past weekend, there were the same number of homicides in Charlotte as Chicago, despite Chicago having almost three times the population. The release of extremely violent and unrepentant criminals mere hours after they attempt to kill someone is a daily occurrence throughout Charlotte now, despite the recent bipartisan effort to allegedly stop this exact type of situation from occurring. The recent bipartisan hype surrounding the passing of Iryna's Law has meant absolutely nothing, and not a single judge has actually implemented harsher bail conditions for any criminal since the bill became law two weeks ago. This attempted murder proves that once again, in the exact same city, the release of violent criminals continues at breakneck pace. While it is important to remember the names of the judges who authorize the release of such violent criminals, it also must be noted that the state often just refuses to prosecute altogether. In Raeford's case, he's only being charged with assault and not attempted murder, even though he openly confessed to the latter. The police have a confession...yet the District Attorney won't pursue higher charges. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

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

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

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for June 1st through the 7th, 2025. It would appear that the summertime antics are in full swing once again as many significant things have occurred over the past week or so. So let's dive in and take a look at what's happened around the world. Though the world is pretty much on fire as usual today, we're going to spend most of this time talking about things that have occurred in the United States and in Russia or Ukraine. Here at home, we've had everything from political theatrics to domestic terrorism threats, both from malign actors located within the United States and from foreign nation states. Like I say all the time, it is hard to determine if the crime waves that we've seen throughout the United States are any higher than the standard baseline for this time of year or if this is just riot season again. But nevertheless, things have remained fairly kinetic around the country. Across the way, things are not much better in Europe. Though there have been quite a few political developments that are rather interesting this week in Europe. Most of the attention has really been focused on Ukraine as usual. Bottom line, the war in Ukraine continues and peace is nowhere in sight. This is most sharply demonstrated by Ukraine's operation spiderweb, their attack on various Russian military bases throughout the Russian homeland, as well as Russia's retaliation, which so far has mostly taken the form of limited missile strikes uh on Kiev proper, mostly the industrial sector of the city. So sources are dubious at best. This is the Ukraine war, right? And misinformation and propaganda is a huge part uh it's a huge tool used by both sides. So, it's hard to figure out what's actually going on. This is not the first few weeks of the war where uh before the propaganda machines got spun up. So, you know, we're kind of here at the latest stage propaganda kind of situation. So, it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on. However, Russia has struck a few targets in Kiev, mostly in the industrial sector, factories, uh military sides, things like that, but it hasn't really been the the big one that everyone's kind of expecting from uh Russia with regards to their response for Ukraine's attack, right? So, if we recall, the last time Ukraine made significant gains such as the their foray in Kursk, the Kursk offensive, Russia launched an IRBM. So, Russia launching a few cruise missiles and a few uh short-range ballistic missiles here and there, that's not really proportionate to what Ukraine did to them with this sneak attack. So, definitely uh keep an eye on this. I'm definitely going to be watching out for to to see what Russia's proper response is going to be. They may not do anything more than this, but I highly doubt it. They're going to have to respond in some way. And just to hammer home the significance of this attack, let's scroll over to Windtac where I will show you some products that I have for Operation Spiderweb. All right, so here we are on the map. So I know that this may look a little bit different uh for some of you out there who uh are used to my ArcGIS maps. This is not ArcGIS. Uh many of you may recognize this as WindC. So this is the Windows version of ATAC or the TAC ecosystem. Now, I know I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself by introducing a new thing without uh kind of any explanation. However, I did want to use WINTAC today to illustrate what's going on in Russia because a kind viewer submitted a data package for me. Uh they went ahead and plotted all of the things that were damaged and destroyed in Russia. And it's a little bit uh more helpful to have a a 3D view of the world that I can more easily uh show with my screen capture software. So, for those of you who are already spun up on ATAC and the TAC ecosystem and you say, "Hey, I want this uh for myself." Fear not. Uh all of these icons here are the kinetic activity tracker and the border crisis tracker, both of which are KMZ's that I have published on my GitHub page. So, if you want to emulate exactly what I have here, you can certainly do so if you wish. I've been updating these KMZs fairly often. And I try to do it once a day, but uh loading in a static KMZ is not uh not the easiest thing to manage if you have to change it out every day. So once every few days seems to be a good medium. But today we're not talking ATAC. Today we are talking Russia. So let's go over here to the European continent and see what is going on. As we can see, a lot of these locations that have been attacked, key military bases, key airfields deep inside Russia's interior have been attacked. Uh this is a pretty big deal. A lot of people may not understand the significance of this, but I'm sure many a white paper will be written by a junior lieutenant uh through all throughout the US military on this topic. So give it some time and you'll definitely see some stuff being written about this. For now though, the very wave top level is understanding that because Ukraine has cracked open this can, now we have a whole lot of concerns that we well we we've always had these concerns, but they've mostly largely just been theoretical. So the reason that these bases were chosen is if you'll notice, they're roughly around the same latitude. Why is this? Well, because of Russia's defense doctrine, which is kind of interesting. So just dipping our toes slightly into a little bit of cold war history to understand why this is so important. Russia is a very special country much like the United States in many ways. In the United States, uh the reason why we have a comparatively easy time with territorial defense is largely because of these two things right here, the large Pacific Ocean and the large Atlantic Ocean. And also the Arctic uh that is very very hard for armies to march their way through. So the United States compared to say I don't know most of Europe, it's very very hard for an adversary to just suddenly appear on our borders and want to cause a ruckus, right? Well, Russia is very similar in that while she doesn't have large oceans to protect herself from uh any adversaries that may seek to cause problems for the homeland, Russia does have a lot of space to play with. We all know the classic phrase, right? the classic blunder, never get involved in a land war in Asia. And the reason for that phrase is, well, many reasons, but it also applies to Russia. So, so what does this Ukrainian attack really mean? Well, look at where these attacks took place. They took place thousands of miles in some cases all the way on the other side of the earth from Ukraine. Now, is this because Ukraine has some kind of super secret long-range weapon? No. They were just able to get spies in uh probably through Kazakhstan and uh they were able to make their way to their targets and this was a very big secret squirrel operation, right? So it's not like Ukraine launched a cruise missile from Ukraine and it struck, you know, way over here in the in the Pacific. No, they they were able to um have a fairly large intelligence victory. Now Ukraine is most certainly celebrating this victory and of course they will. I don't blame them for doing so. Here's the problem though. Um, because Russia has such big space and because Russia is so vulnerable, right, a lot of their defenses are mostly just here. A lot of uh Russia's territorial defense is located along her western border with the European continent, right? So, the fact that these attacks were taking so uh so far behind the enemy lines, so to speak, right? This means very simply that nowhere is safe. So at the risk of digressing too much, I just wanted to cement this idea home and really convey the idea that Russia for many many decades uh to include the height of the Soviet Union made a lot of assumptions about her own defense. Right? Russia assumed that well our big size and our uh spread out forces all the way around our country, right? uh that's going to be a pretty good defense, right? So those, you know, uh pesky Americans, if they were to nuke us or something like that, you know, they're going to have to have a lot of weapons to cover pretty much all of the targets that they would have to do. Well, Ukraine, which is a nation which at least before the war and before American support, Ukraine had the GDP of Nebraska, uh roughly. So now, of course, that's a misleading statement because Ukraine has received hundreds of billions of dollars in support publicly and a lot privately as well. That's not being counted as part of those official metrics. But by and large, Russia's assumptions about uh her territorial defense may not be as accurate as they once were. And this is important. So for all of you out there who don't give one hoot about Ukraine and Russia, here's the bottom line. Ukraine's attack has proven, at least to Russia, that Russia's own preconceived notions about her defense and her doctrine and, you know, the whole idea of why Russia is a very, very big military power. All of these preconceived notions maybe not have been thrown out the window, but they're definitely called into question. Russia thought she was safe because she had a large size. Russia thought she was safe because she could spread her military bases out throughout the whole countryside. and you don't really have to defend so much, right? But Ukraine carrying out this attack proved to Russia that Russia's own preconceived notions about her defense may be inaccurate or outdated. And because Russia was wrong, or maybe has maybe not wrong, but maybe has outdated views of her own territorial defense, a similar nation, which has had similar understandings about her own defense, may want to pay attention. Just point blank. if somebody wanted to conduct the same kind of attack here in the United States, we couldn't do anything about it. So, just something to consider. That's why it's kind of important. That's why I've uh been kind of thinking about it. And a lot of people are going to be writing a lot of papers about this for sure. So, um the thing that I'm thinking about is all right, it's it's one and done. It's interesting. We'll write some write some papers on it and do a deep dive on it, but it's not the end, right? The war continues on. And unfortunately, now that this can has been cracked, we have to be concerned about this sort of thing here at home. I'm not saying that there's uh any direct threat to the homeland on this at the moment. I'm just saying I would not be surprised. So, if one day we get a rather unfortunate wire and things get very very spicy very very quickly, don't uh don't think that there wasn't anyone uh who was not predicting this. So, it's not just me. It's anybody and everybody who can see the writing on the wall. So anyway, I thought that was very very interesting and uh kind of a more helpful way to show this in a semi 3D manner. So I'll be updating my KMZs over the next uh few days and weeks to kind of incorporate this sort of thing. I'm going to have to create a few more layers, so please be advised there's going to be a lot of changes on this. Uh I have not incorporated uh this data package just yet. uh I probably will do so, but I'm trying to figure out how I best want to do it. So, uh just please give me some more time on that. But yeah, I thought that was kind of an interesting way to show this data. All right, back to the slides. With regards to strategic movement, there is really nothing significant to report. Uh the aircraft are still at Diego Garcia. There's still deployed there. Construction on various airfields still continues in the Pacific. All the carriers that were underway last week are still underway. And it's really pretty much the status quo. This of course is not too meaningful of information honestly because uh it tends to lull people into a false sense of security by thinking ah well you know we're not deploying any carriers or you know ARGs anywhere um that means that nothing's going on. No that's not true. It just means that uh the potential for a you know air campaign is kind of reduced. So I don't know. I find it very interesting that those B-52s landed at Diego Garcia right before uh Ukraine unleashed their drone attack on Russia's bombers. So, I'm wondering if maybe they're not necessarily there for operational reasons, but for uh reasons of keeping them out of the way. I don't know. That's just kind of a theory. Have no evidence to back that up, but it's something to think about with regards to strategic movement. Moving to the kinetic activity tracker for this week. It has been rather busy around the country. Lots of additions this week. mostly on the border map, but quite a few kinetic things going on as well. So, let's hop right to it with the more concerning icon on the map, which is the biological terror attack or possible biological terror attack, which occurred in the Midwest, specifically within Michigan. Earlier this week, the DOJ announced the arrest of two Chinese nationals, Chinese citizens, uh, by the name of Young King Xian and Zeon Leu, who were arrested for trying to bring a fungus into the United States, which is classified as a potential aggerrorism weapon. This is not something that we tend to focus on so much. However, this is a very serious problem uh, and a very serious threat vector that China has most certainly taken a very, very big interest in. Of course, these two researchers were working at the University of Michigan to allegedly study uh this kind of bioweapon. Now, I think we can all see through this and see what's going on here, but I find it very very interesting that the University of Michigan connection is there, as you would expect. Now, of course, the the media is uh taking two perspectives with this. The first perspective that the mainstream media is taking is that this is the end of the earth and that the fall of western civilization was prevented by intercepting this uh these these samples at the airport. The other perspective is that uh well this this substance appears naturally in the wild pretty much everywhere in America. So it's no big deal. As we probably can guess, the truth is somewhere in between these two extremes. This is absolutely not like anthrax or anything. It's not something that severe. However, it is a problem when you've got two card carrying members of the Chinese Communist Party who signed a letter, I think in 2022, pledging allegiance to the uh People's Republic of China. That's a problem uh when they're handling things that are classified as potential aggerrorism agents. One thing that not a lot of people have remarked on is the timing of this. These individuals were arrested earlier this week. However, the crime took place last year. Almost a year went by between when their samples were intercepted and they were detained at uh the airport for these substances and when they were arrested. I personally would be very curious as to find out where they were and what they were doing for the past year after trying to commit a bioteterror attack here in the United States. Very very interesting to know that information because it certainly seems like they were just allowed to kind of walk around and continue doing what they were doing. So yeah, it's not like they were just intercepted. they've actually had quite a long time to make other preparations and smuggle in more things and things like that. So, yeah, something to be mindful of. I would be very curious as to find out what was going on. Now, of course, I am not completely naive and I understand that it's very likely that the feds let these two people go once they were flagged and tagged basically after this little stunt and their samples were taken away from them. They probably had a van parked outside their house for a year. And once the the feds rolled up their investigation and developed their networks and they figured a we can't really get much more out of this. Only then did they arrest these two people, but that's always a possibility, you know. Uh so you don't want to rule it out. I personally wouldn't give the feds that much credit, but that's just me. It's possible that a lot of personnel changes that occurred earlier this year because of the election. Uh a lot of people figured out a lot of these older investigations and now they're trying to act on them. I don't know. But I do find it interesting that the arrest took place almost a year after the crime. You would think that with something this serious that would be arrested at the scene and, you know, thrown in a cell forever, but I don't know. That's not what happened. Clearly, they were just arrested earlier this week. Speaking of sketchy incidents, let's move out west for a moment and talk about the terror attack or arson attack or I'm not really sure how you want to call it or label it. Even the feds themselves seem to not really know how to label this, but we'll just call it the Boulder, Colorado incident. This was, of course, the Molotov attack on a persistent protest that was occurring outside the old uh the old historic courthouse there in Boulder. I'm not going to go into too much detail because I'm sure a lot of you have been oversaturated on this kind of attack. However, I have received a lot of messages from locals who are very much aware of this area. And from what I can gather, Pearl Street alone is a rather infamous area. It's very much a uh politically challenging area to be in. As we can see, there's a lot of social issues. So, I'll just say that this area is a very is very much a an area where a lot of social issues tend to clash. A lot of activists around pretty much all the time. Kind of like Portland and Seattle. There are some streets which are basically just I don't know First Amendment zones or whatever you want to call it now. But basically, a lot of people who just want to make their calls heard. They tend to hang out in this general area depending on the time of year and depending on what issue is hot at a particular given moment. In this case, there have been a few pro-Israel demonstrations that have really just been persistent demonstrations. And what I mean by that is it's basically just people getting lawn chairs and sitting uh out in the park there with signs. And that's pretty much it. It's not really much more than that. It's mostly the elderly who have been partaking in these demonstrations. But in this case, earlier this week, uh this individual who does not appear to be very um well wrapped too tight decided to attack one of these demonstrations that had been there for a while. Uh so he lit a molotov and threw it and this is why he is shirtless because he also set himself on fire as one commonly does throwing molotovs. I have not seen any update on how the people are doing who were attacked. I don't know their condition or anything. I saw reports that say that two people were very severely burned, but I haven't seen any follow-up information on that. No one was killed in the attack. So, uh there's that. But in terms of casualties and and those who were wounded, I I just don't know. Again, the suspect as well, his whole life has been kind of released and been the focus of, you know, mainstream media as well as authorities. So, I'm I'm not going to go into too much detail on that. But again, it's just a kind of constant reminder that as summertime comes, these persistent demonstrations, people who have a lot of free time on their hand to kind of demonstrate their whatever cause they wish to, you know, put out there, they're going to be out on street corners and because of this, you're going to have more risk, right? In this case, the closure area here, as you can see, the evacuation zone lasted for over 24 hours. So, I thought that was very, very interesting. And I think they were I think the local authorities were trying to uh I think they were trying to keep demonstrations from clashing again. So they basically just kept everybody out of that area for a couple of days. It wasn't just a few hours. It was several days. Uh and this evacuation zone eventually shrunk down and was cancelled. But still, you may find that because a couple of groups protesting issues you've probably never even heard of because they decided to have a a battle royale in the street. you may find that the city center of a particular area is closed down for a while. Just something to keep in mind as as we move forward into the summer. In the exact same vein, as I am recording this this morning, there are what I would consider largescale riots in Los Angeles. This is mostly taking place at the federal detention facility, the federal building uh there in central Los Angeles. And largely it is uh pro-immigration, counter ICE kinds of unrest. So far, it's pretty much your standard riot. It hasn't gotten too out of hand. They've broken a lot of things, destroyed a lot of vehicles. Uh they appear to be very well funded uh this time around, which is a huge indicator because they've got pre-made signs made uh which are not cheap. They've got vehicles that are driving around that have been made up with signs on them. So, something to be mindful of. the funding level. If a protest shows up and they appear to all have very professionally done signs, they all are wearing matching t-shirts, they're all show up at all the same time, they've coordinated traffic, they've got staging areas. If it appears to be a more professional uh situation, you know, be mindful of that. This is the kind of indicator for something going wrong uh with with a lot of these demonstrators. I know a lot of people will be quick to point out that a lot of these protesters are paid. I can't verify that for sure. For sure. I don't know if anybody can really. It makes perfect sense, but at the end of the day, I'm thinking more tactically on the ground. It doesn't matter if a person's paid or not. If you get hit in the face with a brick, it's going to be a bad day for you. So, just please be mindful of uh the civil unrest going on throughout Los Angeles today and throughout the weekend. Also, something to be aware of. Uh please be on the lookout for this individual up in the Washington State area. This is one Travis Decker. He is the lead suspect in the very gruesome murder of his three children uh at the Rock Island campground just uh east of Seattle just west of Levvenworth. I've been following this one personally because unlike a lot of the other gruesome murders around the country, at least for the first day or so of the manh hunt for this individual, there was a decently good chance that he might be discovered. He left his vehicle at the at the murder site and it's assessed that he was on foot traveling throughout some of these trails throughout the area. So, I wanted to put the notice out to make people aware of this individual because we got to catch this guy. And uh it looks like based on the search area, the extremely rugged terrain, it's probably going to be a member of the public who comes across him first. Now, the initial search area was closed off to the public. uh the local authorities and the state officials and now the FBI who's involved in this. They do not want uh help from local citizens locating this guy during the first few days of the search. I don't know why, but I suspect that it probably has to do with a lot of the rugged terrain. Every single year, uh the county sheriff has got to go out there and rescue people from this exact location. So, it's very very hard uh to find people who want to be found out here. Uh, and that makes for a very challenging search for a fugitive. So, someone who does not want to be found is not going to be found unless they make mistakes. And the reason that I wanted to highlight this is because uh this individual has already made some pretty big mistakes. As of right now, local authorities think they've narrowed down his position to the Pacific Crest Trail. Uh, so he could have gone north or south uh up and down that trail. It's it's hard to say. I can't there's nothing in the in the public view that indicates which direction he went. I can say that the the PCT intersects a lot of other trails in this area. So, if he is truly a fugitive, he's probably going to be using these trails as handrails uh more rather than just walking down the trail. He could also be prepared. He could have cashed supplies. He could also be out of the country by now. Enough time has had has passed to where he could be long gone. But local authorities seem rather adamant, and I don't know why, but I suspect it has to do with the intelligence they have. uh local authorities seem rather adamant that he is still in the local area. So since this uh trail and these the parks in this general area are about to get the flood of people uh into them for recreational purposes, a lot of backpackers uh start moving into this area uh this time of year. Please be on the lookout uh in case you find this individual alive or deceased. So I know a rather gruesome end for the day, but uh that's pretty much all I have. Let's go ahead and wrap things up with the intercepted ghost net reports. And this week was a very fascinating ghost net uh session because right at the time that Russia launched her counterattack against Ukraine uh at least with regards to uh the precursor attacks like the missiles striking Kiev uh that occurred during the ghost net window. So people were talking back and forth about these missiles being launched all in an off-grid manner. So I think that's a very fascinating development. I think that's very good to see. It's very interesting to see information being exchanged on geopolitical issues around the world via HF radio in a way that cannot be censored. You know, in case somebody gets upset and turns off Starlink, in case some malign actor wants to take down a cell tower in your area, you can still get world news through HF or shortwave radio. So once again, thank you guys for contributing to this uh Ghostnap project. Uh you it is really all of you who contribute to this that make it a great thing. And once I get a few other projects uh out of the way, I plan to make it a lot better. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Here are the sources as usual. Again, links are on my Obsidian page. The KMLs and KMZs for uh most of what I've talked about today are already available on my GitHub page. And all of my other mapping products are, of course, in the description box below. So, thank you all for watching and thank you for all of your support. And I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for March 30th through April 5th, 2025. So let's get right to it. Starting off with our new slide again. It has been a very busy week for strategic movement around the world. On the home front, obviously the biggest concern this week has been largely economic in nature as the White House has released its reciprocal tariff plan, which we'll get to in a moment. The effects of this are largely still working out. Things are happening very, very quickly. So it's probably going to be a few more days before we see any real solid changes. Right now, things are just too fluid to to determine exactly how things are going to stand. Nevertheless, over in Eastern Europe, the war continues in Ukraine as before. Ukraine has very much fallen out of the news cycle as the economic impacts and things in the Middle East are heating up. But unfortunately, no developments on that for this week. Over in the Far East, the Chinese naval drills in the vicinity of Taiwan have concluded, largely without any big changes other than every time China does one of these drills, they learn something new. And this time around it it was really more of a focus on combined arms warfare and getting service branches to work with one another and improve communications and logistics and command and control things like this things that you would absolutely need to to be very sharp on if if you're going to invade a nation like Taiwan. So China has most certainly been practicing that and they have learned quite a bit. But most eyes around the world have been focused on the Middle East this week as what I'm hesitantly calling the surge has continued. Cargo flights from both Europe and from Southeast Asia have most certainly been flooding into the region, adding to the concerns that this whole force buildup in the Middle East might not actually be a bluff or any kind of power projection role primarily. But we'll get into that in just a moment. Speaking of strategic movements, I've created a a very rudimentary fleet tracker here just to add a little bit more context with regards to what is going on with regards to strategic movement. So the past week has been host to significant American naval activity on the west coast. The USS Nimttz carrier strike group has deployed on a standard rotation to the far east. The Carl Vincson CSG was the one that was stationed in the Pacific. However, Sentcom announced uh earlier a few a few days ago that they will be taking operational control of the Carl Vincent. So, there will be two aircraft carriers in Sentcom's AO until further notice essentially. So, right now in the Middle East supporting various operations in the Middle East are the Harry S. Truman carrier strike group and the Carl Vincson carrier strike group. The Vincent's probably going to make their way into the Indian Ocean right about now, right as this brief comes out. So having two aircraft carriers in the Middle East is not entirely an oh my gosh, we're going to war tomorrow kind of indicator, but it is something to be mindful of, except for the fact that there aren't two aircraft carriers in the Middle East. There are actually three. The French are also in theater. The Charles Zagal carrier strike group is wrapping up her deployment to the Middle East. It was a standard training deployment. Nothing out of the ordinary, but as of I think this morning, she was still spotted in Djibouti. So, uh, you know, she's still on station kind of in the region, and it's going to be interesting to see if we're expecting some kind of shenanigans to go down in the Middle East over the next couple of weeks. You may see her either kind of linger on station for a bit or shoot and scoot really quickly back up uh to her home waters to to rest and refit so that she could come back out again if needed. Once again, this is really the only carrier in NATO that's uh you know operationally like deployable at the moment as far as I know. So something to keep an eye on for sure. Also unconfirmed reporting this week. I I did want to mention it because even though we can't confirm it, this is one of those closed source things, but uh some closed source reporting that, you know, mainstream media journalists are getting directly from their contacts in the Pentagon states that at least one THAAD battery and at least two Patriot batteries have been deployed from Paycom to the Middle East. The THAAD battery looks like it probably came from South Korea because there were a lot of uh there was a a boost a noticeable increase in C17 and C5 traffic out of South Korea a few days ago which was a little bit odd and now we're kind of just putting two and two together. It's a very loose assessment but it makes sense that a a THAAD system would be deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. Same thing with the Euima. I've been keeping an eye on the USS Euima LHD7 which is once again not slated for deployment anytime soon. She just wrapped up a pretty big exercise uh in the Atlantic a few days ago or a couple weeks ago at least and she's going through various modernization processes right now. So right now she's been moving around a lot though. There are a lot of indications and warnings that she may be getting ready for a deployment and it's nothing scheduled as far as I know. So that'll be something to keep an eye on. unscheduled deployments of very large naval assets or non-standard deployments of naval assets or transferring one aircraft carrier from one AO to another that these are big indications for something going on. Of course, there are always counter arguments for that, but this is the real deal as it stands right now. Drilling down a little bit more specifically to the North American continent. I have continued to update what I'm I'm very loosely calling the domestic terrorism tracker. My goal for this is maybe a little bit hard to convey at the moment, but but generally speaking, this data set uh among others that I'm working on, this data set in particular is meant to track all of the things that are not necessarily just routine street crime, but a little bit a little bit more high-profile than that. It started off as tracking all the various domestic terrorism events, but as we all know, I I don't particularly like that word terrorism because, well, it can be used in a bunch of different ways and it's a very very loose definition. So, if anybody has any better idea for what I should call this, please let me know. But yeah, this is uh kind of the good baseline I'm laying down. And and the reason that I'm I'm trying to do this is so that we can look at charts like this. Uh again, this is very primitive. I've got much prettier ones in the works, but we can see that the latter half of the month of March experienced a burst of vandalism activity, but also other types of activities. You can start to see more colors come into the chart there at that point in time as well. we can start to see a diversification of these styles of more political politically motivated attacks. So again, I know it's super boring. It's not super helpful for most of you out there. I know a lot of you just want the just want the story, right? But these are the things that I'm working on kind of behind the scenes that will paint a more clear picture later. I promise it will make it will make sense later on. So switching gears back to the economic front, let's talk about the North American trade tariffs as they are being implemented by the White House. These are the charts produced by the White House. So, you're seeing the primary source material for which trade tariffs are going to go into effect with which nation. Again, it's a lot of data to take in, but really we only need to take a look at uh the first chart here. Even though we've got a total of eight charts, really the the first one is where most of the data is centered. So, now let me state right up front and I am most certainly not an economist. I really can't comment on a lot of these economic things with any accuracy. And as with anything in the world of economics, there is a lot of very vicious and vitriolic debate on a lot of this stuff. But let me just share with you two things that I'm kind of thinking about that might be helpful for you over the next week or so while we're still waiting to see how these things kind of shake out. First of all, the immediate impact is largely going to be with industries which can't easily and quickly bring manufacturing back home. So all of this aside, let's talk solutions for a moment. It's never a good idea to panic. Panic is never helpful. it's it's it doesn't really help us at all in any situation really. But being mindful of the impacts that could happen very very quickly uh in the world of logistics is very very helpful. Bottom line, if you need to buy something, know where that thing is made. Again, I don't have to tell you guys this. This is all just common sense kind of stuff. But considering that we are uh crossing the Rubicon or looking at the Rubicon in many ways these days, it's just important to recognize where we are at and take it from there, right? But anyway, we shall see, I suppose. So, let's move over to our favorite island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia. As many of you noted this week, I updated some products regarding the V2 spirits that have been observed at Diego Garcia for deployed. This imagery is not open source imagery. Well, technically it is, uh, but it's not free. you got to pay for it. This is commercial satellite imagery from March 30th showing five B2s. And we got some imagery a little bit more recently from April 1st that shows all six. So, at the moment, we have confirmed that at least six B2 Spirit bombers are for deployed to Diego Garcia along with at least six KC 135 Strata tankers for refueling, obviously. Now, we can get way down into the weeds with this, but I did want to briefly mention because I forgot to mention last time, these uh pillshaped objects uh just to the north of the runway there, these are indeed hangers for B2 Spirit bombers. So, when it comes to numbers, theoretically, technically, there could be as many as 10. Four in the hangers and six out on the runway. Now, I personally do not think this is likely. I think that the six that we see are the six that are there. Why do I think this? Well, essentially because we were able to bean count. Uh this is something that kind of goes back to the world of intelligence and the Cold War and essentially looking at satellite images and counting the beans as they move around on the map. In this case, airframes. Many an imagery analyst has made their living off of bean counting for their career, tracking the Soviets and Russian ships in and out of port like the Hunt for October, things like that. So, we can do the same thing nowadays with things like strategic aircraft. So, I will state that it is technically possible for four more B2 Spirit bombers to have sneakily taken off from Whiteman Air Force Base and flown halfway around the world to land here and not be imaged by a satellite and very hush hush gone right into the hangers. I don't think that's very very likely. Uh because all six of these we were able to track and we were able to know how many were on the way because of the aviation traffic as they were able to uh they had to communicate with air traffic control transiting various airspace uh corridors and things like that. Like I mentioned last week, there are only 20 of these around the country. So we only have 20 B2 bombers in existence. But I failed to mention last week that not all of them are operational. And as of the congressional hearings on various military budget stuff from last year, the Pentagon states that their testimony is at least that 11 are operational. So this means that right here on this image, you are looking at over half of America's entire long range stealth bomber force. That's a pretty big deal. B2s do fly around the world. They are seen doing exercises. Uh they even targeted the Houthis a while back couple of months ago, as a matter of fact. So, they do get around, but four deploying six to one base, I mean, these that's pretty rare. I don't I don't know if I've ever seen that before. I don't think I've ever seen this many B2s in one place outside of Whiteitman Air Force Base. If it's a bluff, it's one that we've never made before. So, that's all I can say so far. But, but more generally speaking, if we just acknowledge the fact that there are these six bombers are here and we've deployed such a huge number of these bombers to this one base in the middle of nowhere. What are they for? Well, in short, probably this place. This is Iran's Natan's nuclear site. So, this is one of, I believe, two facilities, which are kind of like the main nuclear facilities for the uh Iranian development of nuclear weapons. The Iranians have a lot of nuclear sites sprinkled all around their country, but this is one of the main ones that would probably be used. And and let me explain why. So, if we add some overlays here, we can see this is you normal nuclear facility, right? We've got the standard stuff that you might expect, of course, processing facilities for all kinds of precursor materials. We've got underground enrichment halls and uh facilities for enriching uranium and the processing of various minerals and all kinds of administrative buildings and power plants and transportation facilities. All kinds of stuff. It's just a military base that conducts enrichment of uranium, right? No surprises here. Well, well, the real secret of why these B2s are probably at Diego or Seia lies a little bit to the south. So, if we shift our map just a little bit to the south, we can still see the main base at the top of the slide here. We can look down into the mountains a little ways. And this, my friends, is probably why these B2s are a dig a Garcia. It may look like a nondescript mountain to to you and me, but rest assured, there are a lot a lot a lot of underground facilities here. And as we can see by the hardened bunker entrances here at the bottom left, there is an entire labyrinth of underground storage facilities that may or may not already contain nuclear weapons. So either way, this is probably why the B2s are here. Because if we take a more datacentric approach, we can just do 5 minutes of research on the internet and find out that to target an underground facility that's potentially hundreds of feet underground, you would need exactly one type of munition, the GBU57, otherwise colloquially known as the bunker buster. Now, there are a few other munitions that work as as well with these types of things. However, this is the tool for the job. If you're trying to use the correct tool for the correct job, this is exactly the only tool you would probably use to take out these facilities. Again, there are other options, but if we're thinking like a general, this is what you would need. You would need a bunch of B2s carrying a bunch of GBU57s and dropping these bombs not on, of course, not on the entrances, but on where the main underground storage halls and facilities are located. So, this is the deck stacked, right? We have half of our bombers overseas at some Podunk Island in the middle of nowhere. And these bombers, the B2s that are at Diego Garcia, fun fact, they are the only bombers that are currently, at least publicly, currently certified to carry the GBU57. So, we've got the right tools for the job, the right platforms to carry those tools in the theater and stationed at a base which is within range of these facilities. So, this is why we're trying to unfold the mystery. Is this a bluff or is this something else? This is where the grand question comes in. Has the Rubicon been crossed? Because as far as I can tell right now, there are many different theories about what's going on in the Middle East. Not just with the B2s, though that is a fascinating aspect of it. The B2s, the carriers were moving around, moving THADs and and Patriots around. You know, we're we're starting to add up a lot of random facts and random details that are starting to paint a picture. And so far there are two main theories. So the first theory is that this is all power projection. The United States doesn't really intend to do this. But we want to make the Iranians think that we will. And because of that, the Pentagon and Sentcom is undergoing this very elaborate, very very elaborate demonstration of power, which still by the way falls into the aspect of military deception because uh demonstration is a type of military deception, right? It is it is an ambiguity decreasing operation. meaning that it's a it's an operation that is intended to make your adversary more certain of what your plan is. Right? So, if you're an Iranian general right now, it sure does look like the United States is getting ready to bomb your country, doesn't it? So, that's kind of theory one. Theory two is a lot more nefarious and it's a lot more black pilling, if you if you will. So, the the other theory is that this is not a a bullying move. This is not a move intended to force the Iranians to be scared, but this is actually a legitimate wartime preparation. This is what we would see uh if we're actually going to war with Iran and uh that's really it. It's not really I mean if they're scared about it, then that's you know a side benefit. But essentially the second theory is that the Rubicon has been crossed. And just as a side note for those of you who don't know what this this reference is to crossing the Rubicon, this is an analogy that goes back to the time of Julius Caesar back in uh 48 49 BC I believe in which Julius Caesar, right, was kind of puttering around with his army in the district of Gaul uh where he was governor at the time and and an actual river really more of a small stream than anything else separated his district from the administrative boundary of Rome. And at the time it was illegal. It was an act of war. it was a huge deal to cross over that river Rubicon uh with an army. And Julius Caesar knew this and as his army was crossing over this river, he knew that he that that once he crossed over to the other side that he would essentially be committing treason and he would be committed to his attack. So there was no turning back once you've crossed the Rubicon. You've kind of committed to your military advance. So today, in short, the term crossing the Rubicon is essentially synonymous with crossing a point of no return. Now, the second theory, like I mentioned, is that maybe the White House is standing in the Rubicon right now. Maybe they're not fully committed right now to a war with Iran. Or maybe they are. Who knows? I mean, if a decision had been made, if Trump had secretly and covertly made a decision weeks ago to go to war with Iran, and all we're doing is checking down the calendar, you wouldn't see anything different. So, that's kind of one of the big bits of evidence uh that's stacking up to say that maybe theory 2 has a lot of weight as well. Of course, we want to think it's just power projection. We want to think that it is indeed just a just a posturing move to get the Iranians to do what we want. Um now, again, the original question of why are we involved in any of this at all? Well, that's another story for another time. But seeing as we're here now, the American people are trying to figure out is their government trying to bluff Iran or is their government committing them committing the American people to another Giwat. And at the moment, I'm sorry I don't have a good answer for you. There are a lot of other sub theories that that maybe come about. Like for instance, there's a lot of credence to the theory that well maybe it's not for the Iranians. Maybe it's not for any of these complexes, underground bunkers where the Iranians are storing nuclear material. Maybe that's not what we're going for. Maybe it's the maybe it's the Houthis. I'm not going to say there isn't a lot of evidence to say, well, maybe we maybe we deployed half of our long-range bombers to, you know, take out the Houthies. I mean, it would definitely be using a cannon to kill a mosquito, but I don't know. It's a new era. It's a new Pentagon. Maybe they're maybe they think they can do it. I don't know. The Rubicon idea is definitely a central aspect and will be important to think about over the next few weeks as more and more evidence starts stacking up. It's all based on a balance. What do you think? Where is the reasonable doubt? Is there more evidence in pile A or is there more evidence in pile B? So, all in all, I know this is not particularly helpful, but uh generally speaking, this is kind of where we're at. There are going to be a lot more indications and warnings uh come about over the next few days, weeks, months, years. and uh trying to keep a a more neutral perspective and acknowledging the the very serious concerns when they do appear is is going to be critical because I think a lot of times we're tempted to stick our heads in the sand and say, "No, this isn't happening and no, it's just a big bluff." And that may not be the best uh perspective moving forward. If nothing else, that's why I'm kind of paying attention to this because, you know, I I I I'm not saying it's happening. Don't don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that it's happening, but I see the potential for us to get dragged into another very bad conflict in the Middle East and I'm I'm a little bit concerned about that. So, that's why I buy these satellite images. That's why I keep an eye on this. And, you know, hopefully I'll look like a fool. You know, I would I would really be happy if I look like a complete idiot for spending so much time on this in a few weeks and all these planes go home and everything's hunky dory again. I would be the happiest person in the world. But until that happens, uh, I've got to keep buying satellite images. So, so wrapping things up for today. I know I've talked way too long, too much coffee today, I'm afraid. But wrapping things up with the ghost net. I'm afraid that I missed the ghost net window this week. I was preoccupied with some other stuff. And uh, by the time I got on, I only heard a few uh, SNR requests. So, that's to that's totally my fault. But anyway, the propagation by the time I got on wasn't too wasn't too great anyway. So, if you were out there, I probably wouldn't have heard you anyway. I'm trying to work on my antenna, doing a little bit of uh spring cleaning with antenna work and things like that. So, you guys know how it is. I'm I'm no different than than all of you who make this network a great thing. So, I've still got to get my practice reps into just like everybody else. So, so that's pretty much all I have for today. Uh here are the sources as usual. And you guys know the drill. Clickable links are on my Obsidian page for each day of reporting. Thank you all for watching. Thank you for sticking with me this time. I will keep working on the projects I'm working on. I've got some other irons in the fire, too, and we'll see how that pans out next week. But hopefully we'll get some more good news next week. So, thank you guys all for watching. Thank you for all of your support. I couldn't do it without you. I seriously mean that. And I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

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Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for December 14th through the 20th, 2025. As usual at this point, the insanity continues and we have a lot to cover this week. So, let's hop to it. Overall, like last week, this week has been busier than usual with multiple terror attacks taking place around the world. First up, we have the Brown University shooting here in the homeland, as well as several arrests of terror cells such as the Turtle Island Liberation Front planning to conduct attacks. Down in Australia, we have the Bondi Beach mass shooting and also the follow-up terror attack that was halted a few days after that initial incident, which we'll get to in a moment. And finally, yesterday, we had a mass stabbing attack in Taiwan. A comparatively rare form of terror attack in Taipei, but still one that caused a few casualties nonetheless. Considering the elevated terrorism threat risk globally, many nations have canceled their New Year celebrations out of fear of things like vehicle ramming attacks and the inability to maintain security for large crowds. It's not entirely clear as to what these threats are. Most nations aren't really citing a specific threat. So, this could be a case of major cities just not wanting to hold celebrations and so they're using terrorism as an excuse. Or it could be that there are so many insurgent groups implanted throughout the Western world that the risks of vehicle ramming attacks are simply too high. Now that it's become clear that mass migration is directly and clearly linked to an increase of violence, it's likely that certain politicians don't want an attack to happen in their city, which would rile up the populace even more against mass migration. So that's the kind of unfortunate flavor this week. Attacks past, present, and future. And before we get into some of this stuff a little bit more in depth, let's talk about strategic movement for this week. Not much to report on the Caribbean front. Things are mostly the same as before. The Uima is still in port in the US Virgin Islands where she is conducting a port call. She's been there for a while now, I think. Otherwise, there have been a few minor positioning updates. A few ships moving around here and there, but nothing major. The Ford is still cutting circles in the ocean off the coast of Puerto Rico as of this morning, so no major updates there. Perhaps the biggest update has been the increase in strategic aviation in the Caribbean. There has been an observable increase in intelligence aircraft conducting flights off the coast of Venezuela. So, that very much needed intelligence preparation of the battle space is being conducted on a national scale down there. They're probably collecting imagery of the coastline, but more likely they're probably collecting sigant on whatever forces Maduro can muster. They're not exactly hiding uh their presence. They're obviously leaving their transponders turned on so that the whole world can see exactly where their spy aircraft are flying. So, other than that, no major change. Uh tensions remain high and most people watching this kind of expect war to break out any day or week now, especially since Venezuela has allegedly starting escorting tankers through the blockade. Now, on that front, again, no major news. Uh, Venezuela hasn't actually tried to escort a sanctioned vessel out of their waters yet. Most of the rhetoric pertaining to Venezuela escorting ships, you know, in their territorial waters has pertained to nonsanctioned vessels. So, they're kind of escorting the vessels that don't actually need an escort. But there will inevitably be a point at which Venezuela decides to run the gauntlet. So, that's going to be a pretty big international flash point that could uh kick things off from there. So, maybe the US wants that to happen to provide justification to invade Venezuela. I don't know. But that's kind of the next point of friction that's likely to come about in the next couple of weeks. Moving to the United States, this week has been very kinetic and multiple incidents have taken place that are worthy of consideration. First up, we have the Brown University shooting and the murder of the MIT professor, which are two incidents that the authorities state are related incidents, so we'll dig into that in just a bit. Otherwise, the FBI has now finally become involved in the horrific acid attack that took place in Savannah, Georgia almost 2 weeks ago, which is why I've left this one on the slide for now. And out west, four wouldbe terrorists were arrested as they were planning to conduct attacks in Los Angeles during New Year's celebrations, which is probably why many nations around the world have exercised caution during New Year's events and canceled fireworks and stuff like that. There are quite a few different groups in the United States and internationally, which are uh trying to increase the rhetoric when it comes to New Year's targeting for some reason, mostly because New Year's celebrations usually involve large crowds, but it's also not a really big political holiday or a big religious holiday. So for the different types of terrorists which just cause to seek mass mayhem and not necessarily want to conduct terrorism for a political goal, uh New Year's is a pretty good holiday for them to choose, uh which is why a lot of New Year's attacks tend to happen. But there are some very interesting considerations when we talk about that terrorism label, which we'll get to in just a minute, because it's kind of interesting to examine these threats as they come about and why they come about. That's the more important part which helps us identify when and where future attacks may take place or at least where the risk is a little bit more elevated. Now breaking out into the regions for this week, I wanted to briefly mention the Epstein file release which took place last night. This was a very uh hotly contested document release that was very much hyped up. So I wanted to mention that it did occur. However, roughly 90% of the documents look exactly like this completely uh redacted from the top of the page all the way to the bottom. So, I don't think very many people were expecting much, but I know this was kind of in the news and Congress even passed a special law. The uh Epstein Files Transparency Act to force the removal of redactions from documents like this. And the DOJ just released black pages like they always tend to do with this sort of stuff. So, from what I can tell so far, there really aren't any new revelations when it comes to the actual text. I expect a bit more information and a bit more context on exactly what was released over the next few days as people kind of get into it and start examining some of these documents, but for the most part, it's just complete redactions uh from top to bottom. So, again, not entirely unexpected, but I did want to mention it because it was it was kind of being talked up all this week. So, moving down to Georgia, I wanted to offer a brief update on the acid attack that took place near Foresight Park in Savannah a couple of weeks ago. So, the FBI uh yesterday announced that they are actually seeking all of the doorbell cameras and any security camera footage that anyone might have who live in this giant rectangle in downtown Savannah. So, if you live in downtown Savannah inside this rectangle, the FBI would like any kind of security camera footage that you have that features the suspect in that case. Now, of course, the big elephant in the room is that this took the FBI nine full days to actually start the investigation. Now, we can argue about this case all day long. However, one specific argument that I saw uh online this week pertaining to this exact case really motivated me to kind of clear the air on the topic and clarify uh the nature of counterterrorism doctrine in general. So, one of the arguments that I have seen is that the reason that the FBI took so long to start investigating this specific gruesome crime is because this is a local law enforcement issue. Right? That's the argument that's being stated is that well this was really the job of the Savannah Police Department. The FBI doesn't normally investigate crimes involving a single person and it doesn't meet the criteria for the feds getting involved and so on. However, this is incorrect. This is not how uh the world of counterterrorism works. And here's why. Let's first examine the nature of terrorism in general. We throw around this word terrorism a lot and we don't really kind of get to the meat of the matter of what is actually classified as a terror attack. So, let's go ahead and go to the FBI's website. They're the ones who make the doctrine, right? And here are the definitions. So, the FBI has two definitions for terrorism. International terrorism and domestic terrorism. Now, the international one is quite an easy definition to wrap our minds around. It is a lot more clear-cut because international terrorism as per the FBI is defined as violent criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by or associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations. state sponsored, meaning that you're a part of an FTO, a foreign terrorist organization. Again, this is why this uh rhetoric has been in the news lately of designating TDA, Trendy Aragua, as a foreign terrorist organization and so on and so forth, right? These labels mean things in the international arena. Well, maybe not in terms of international relations, but for the United States, if you are a part of an FTO, well, you're going to get slotted right into the FBI's investigative process automatically. you don't necessarily have to do anything. Just by being affiliated with some of these groups, you are now, by the FBI's definition, a terrorist. The other definition, which is the one that we're going to focus on today, is a lot more loosey goosey. I'll say domestic terrorism, as per the FBI, is defined as violent criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. Now again, this may come as no surprise to many of you out there. However, this definition will more or less cover every single thing that happens under the sun. So, this is a very broad definition and the FBI is known to quite liberally apply this definition to lots of different things that they want to classify as terrorism. However, the last part of that sentence is what matters. at political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. That part of the sentence, if we crack open a few older counterterrorism manuals, those five categories are the traditionally accepted motivations for carrying out a terror attack. It's not exactly perfect, but it's it kind of gets us across the line with regards to most kinds of terror attacks. Once again, this is highly subjective. This is like the ultimate game of semantics as to what is defined as terrorism, right? If you read two different textbooks, you may come out with two different views of what a terrorist attack actually is. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of variation here. So, please don't get hung up on the exact words in this this definition because it's going to vary quite a bit depending on which textbook you read, depending on which uh professors you had teaching you counterterrorism topics. It's going to vary on what you would consider to be a terrorist attack. I will say though, however, that if we go back to say the early Giwat era where the word terrorism started being used a lot more often by governments and agencies and things like that, what was the definition back then? Well, honestly, it it's not it wasn't very much different than what it is today. However, what they tried to make it seem like is that well, it's in the name. What is terrorism? It's in the name. It's an it's an attack that is intended to cause fear. That's not really true. In most cases, terrorist attacks are not meant to get you to do something differently. They're really just attacks that are coming from a certain range of ideiations. In this case, political, religious, social, racial, or environmental. It's not about causing fear so much as it is carrying out an attack for a certain reason, one of these five reasons. I know it may not make a whole lot of sense, or maybe it does make a lot of sense in retrospect, but this is something that we have to understand. And this is why I wanted to talk about what is terrorism because this applies to the Savannah case. So going back to our initial question, right, the thing that got me interested is people saying, "Well, this guy was just one guy. He attacked one person. He threw acid on this woman. It was horrible, but it was kind of an isolated attack. So not really terrorism, right? Wrong. The reason why he did this is what dictates it being a terror attack. He did not throw acid on this woman to steal her wallet. Right? That's not what happened. If that were the case, you would have an argument, right? You would have an argument to say, "Well, he just used a very brutal attack as part of a mugging and this was a financially motivated attack and thus not terrorism." But that's not what happened. He randomly threw acid on this lady and calmly walked away. This is why the feds should have been involved in this case early on because we don't know what the person's ideiation is. We don't know what the person's ideology is. We don't know why they conducted the attack in many cases until we catch them, right? So, it's better to air on the side of caution and assume that this guy conducted this attack for terroristic reasons. And then once the guy's in jail, once the suspect is captured and they are no longer a threat to the public, we can conduct a further investigation to determine what charges would be appropriate for this particular crime. Right? It sounds very simple, but once you start laying it out, you realize what's going on here. So, so again coming back to this specific attack in Savannah here. Did this guy throw acid on this woman just because he's crazy and mentally ill? Or did he throw acid on this woman because she was a white woman? If it is the latter, then that would mean that this is meeting the definition of a terror attack and the feds are now the lead investigative authority. Or at least that's the way it should work, right? We don't know why he did this attack. So, it would be best to assume that he did this because he saw a white woman in the park, threw acid on her because she he didn't like the way she looked, and we can go from there. Now, is this definitive proof? No. That's just a theory. However, remember, investigations are not courtrooms, right? The investigative process is not a jury. We can think whatever we want to during an investigation. That's what investigations are all about. In terms of investigations, we don't really have to have a reason to do anything at all except for things like probable cause. and throwing acid on a woman randomly is definitely a probable cause to, you know, search the individual or something like that. That's what we tend to think of in terms of probable cause. But if I've got a whiteboard in my office, I can say, "Yeah, this guy probably targeted this woman because he saw a white woman in a park and he didn't like that and he targeted her because of that." Because th those types of attacks are becoming very common around the United States. I don't need to prove anything to a jury to put that on my whiteboard, right? Once the guy is caught and you can start working through the judicial process and prosecutorial charges and things like that, that's for later on. But I'm talking about right now, this guy's not caught yet. So, this is why investigative tools have to be unlocked early on. It would have made sense for the Savannah PD to say, "Look, we can't handle this. FBI, can you come involved because it sure looks like another black guy just randomly attacked a white girl in a park. You guys take it and run from there." But that's not what happened. So, this is a good reminder of understanding how the motivations for something really do factor into that terrorism label. And that terrorism label matters because of the tools and assets that are going to be available for the investigative process. The FBI and the feds in general are not going to spin up a bunch of resources, right, when it's just a regular street crime. The issue here is is that terrorism tends to be policed very differently than every other crime in the United States because it has a potential to affect other people. Of course, we can argue about semantics all day long, but a say a serial check casher, right? somebody who's committing check fraud like every other day, right? That type of person is going to be policed a lot differently than somebody who's a serial stabber, right? Somebody who's committing check fraud every single day is a lot different type of person than is going out there and stabbing people every day. The urgency by which we police the stabbing person is going to be a lot more important than say going after the financial crimes. So this is why that terrorism label matters so much and why we have to be aware of this because of things like the Providence shooting and also some of the other terrorist attacks that have occurred or taken place around the around the country. Right? So let's go ahead and jump to the Providence shooting for a minute and and talk about this absolute disaster. So the general overview of the story is very hard to summarize actually because the details don't really make a whole lot of sense. So please forgive me for this extremely wavetop overview of what went on. So the general story for how this was carried out is that this individual, Clauddio Neves Valente, decided to commit a mass shooting at his old school, Brown University. He went to the university and decided to loiter around the north side of campus for a few hours before eventually making contact with a student, a former student who was actually secretly living in the basement of the Baris and Holly Engineering building some hours before the shooting took place. From there, some sort of scuffle or altercation or argument ensued between the two and the two parted ways. The homeless student kind of left the area or went back to whatever they were doing. It's not clear. And the shooter hung around the general area. What happens between the this point in the story and the shooting is unclear, but eventually some hours later, Valente allegedly entered a classroom in the Aaris and Holly Engineering building and conducted the shooting. Who he was targeting, we don't know. Why he was targeting, we don't know. None of the witnesses have been interviewed. We just don't know anything more than that. But once the shooting was complete, he eressed from the building uh at a rather slow pace. Uh he managed to just kind of walk around the campus on the north side. And from there, at some point after that shooting, he got into his rental car, which was parked nearby the uh engineering building, and he drove all the way to Boston. Once he was in Boston, uh he transited to the outskirts of Boston where he found his uh old colleague, a professor at MIT now, and shot him in his home, murdered him right then and there. And once that murder was complete, Valente drove all the way to a storage unit, a a mini storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. From there, he is alleged to have taken his own life inside a storage unit there. And this is where his remains were found a couple of days ago. That is the official story as it stands right now. Many details, including especially the timeline of all of this, is very sketchy and has changed by the hour. So, please forgive me if by the time this comes out, something else has changed. Suffice it to say, this is probably one of the most sketchy shootings that has taken place in the US over the past year or so. And I say that rather hesitantly because I know that throughout internet land at large, there's this growing trend of people wanting to be contrarian just for the sake of it or wanting to say that, yeah, something's fishy here. there's some conspiracy on this that or the other just for the sake of like engagement farming or you know stirring up content generation ideas or whatever. I know that it's really popular to do that these days but in this case man this whole case stinks. It is really really sketchy all of it. And honestly I don't even know where to begin. I had originally written out like several pages worth of like all the little details that I picked out that are uh really just kind of not making any sense. But I'm just going to kind of leave it short for today because probably the most egregious thing that I can find so far is the fact that as this investigation was ongoing and as all of these little blunders were occurring from the FBI kicking snow to having like their junior guys out there and failing to secure crime scenes, failure to secure evidence, failure to interview even a single witness to the crime, right? All of these blunders started adding up. But what really got me was congressmen and political officials getting on TV and saying, "Shut up. Don't talk about this. Don't question anything." And what do you think that makes me do? It makes me question things. Especially considering the fact that this investigation was blundered so much that a man lost his life when I think it was probably quite preventable. At the same exact moment that the FBI and the Providence Police Department were getting on TV and telling us that there's no further threat to the community, the killer was in his car on his way to murder somebody else. Okay, that is disgraceful and there's no amount of well investigations are hard that you can hide behind to save yourself from that sort of thing. They have to own up to that. And what really got me paying attention with that is they they did what what I call the beltway demeanor. This is a thing that happens in the world of intelligence, but it's really just kind of a Washington DC thing. And uh what it is is this this demeanor, this um perspective of just condescension just out of nowhere, right? Like how dare you suggest that XYZ is probably a more likely theory. Like why don't you let the experts handle it? you know, the the uh classic, well, we just need to have a conversation about this and we need to discuss this and we need to manage this situation using the most uh boilerplate HR language we can sort of surmise. Personally, I'm more attuned to this, I think, because I got this throughout most of my career. And this is really one of the main reasons why I stopped doing this this kind of work professionally because it's a very interesting form of condescension mixed with a little bit of gaslighting. Like almost like you're somehow inferior for thinking that there may be a further threat to the community. That's what they did. That's the mentality that they had. It's like gaslighting mixed with condescension. Like, oh, you're just super stressed. You need to you need to take a break. uh because you know there's no threat to the community. You know, you're you're crazy for even thinking that. Don't worry about it. We've got it covered. And then meanwhile, there's somebody who's actually got a gun and he's going to kill somebody else while they're actually saying this during the live press conference. Like it's it it's so hard to describe. I'm not doing a super great job of it, but you know it when you see it. It's this this condescension mixed with like elitism. So elitism uh condescension and gaslighting all rolled into one. When you start to see that sort of thing in a press conference, when there's an ongoing criminal investigation, watch out because they're hiding something. And then when they add in this like twinge of almost like pity, like they're like they pity you. They're they're pitying you for thinking that there might be a further threat, like you're inexperienced or something like that, you know, that that really starts to starts to add up a lot of indicators that some sort of deception is going on here. And in this case, it turned out to be correct because what happened? We find out a couple of days later that exactly what the authorities told us was explicitly not happening actually happened. Somebody else got killed. So yeah, that's something that I hope to maybe think about a little harder and kind of encapsulate a little bit better to to to describe it a little bit more accurately because it is a very unique phenomenon and for me who you know I worked in Intel professionally for about 10 years or so. Whenever I would see that, I would know somebody's lying about something. But it most people, it would just go right over their heads. Like the junior guys who hadn't been in been in it long enough to know, they wouldn't be able to determine like, ah, okay, they're trying to skew something here. It's it's almost like um the difference between somebody telling a white lie and then like a professional, you know, um pathological liar. There's a big difference between the two, right? It's the same kind of idea. It's like condescension, elitism, gaslighting, but on steroids. And it's a very very unique perspective that you see some of these people uh use when they're making statements about something is a very big indicator for deception. And in this case we the deception was quite clear. The killer was indeed a further threat to the community and he actually ended up doing the worst case scenario. Ended up killing again. So not only did they fail at stopping a mass shooter, but they failed at apprehending a mass shooter and they failed at stopping a mass shooter from committing another shooting. Right? At least that's by their own story. Now, all of that being said, there is also, I have to mention, a quite high likelihood that the details of how all of this unfolded are simply not true. The timelines are not matching up. By their own admission, they're saying their timelines are not matching up. So, it's very hard to trust anyone as part of the official investigation with this because, well, by their own admission, they're saying their stories are not adding up, right? There's a lot of details that just don't add up. And it's not made any better when you've got the Providence police chief getting on TV struggling to speak English somehow after living in Rhode Island for 41 years. This guy still can't speak English very well. And he's answering extremely pertinent questions in Spanish without translating it for the rest of us. So, I've got to go into Google Translate to see what a police chief just said about a mass shooting in the United States of America. That's a that's a pretty big problem. But also, the attorney general was sitting there, you know, urging the public that they were being foolish. She's being foolish for thinking that there's a further threat to the community when there actually was a further threat to the community. Yeah, this is not a good case. The outcome of this is not good. Uh not only do we not have any sort of justice for the victims of this case, but also we can't really be sure that the incident has reached a point of conclusion now, can we? The official story is that these two cases are linked. The the official story is that this one man, Clauddio Nevice Valente, had some kind of personal grievance which caused him to conduct a mass shooting at Brown University, his old school, and also uh to take out one of his former colleagues that apparently he didn't like or something like that. So officially, that is the link between the two. Again, coming back to our definitions of terrorism, this appears to be or at least what the authorities are stating this to be is a personal dispute. As in he did not conduct this attack for ideological reasons. It was a social reason. it was a personal uh mental health reason or something like that. Now, even using the FBI's own very broad and vague definition of terrorism, we're still in kind of a gray area here, too. Because normally, generally speaking, I mean, there are outliers, but generally speaking, if a person has a dispute with someone else, they're not going to conduct a mass shooting, they're going to take their anger out on the person that they don't like, right? Or the person that they wanted to to remove from society, right? If they have a personal grievance with somebody, they're not going to conduct a mass shooting. Likewise, if they have if they want to conduct a mass shooting, the type of person who's going to be in the frame of mind to conduct a mass shooting generally isn't going to want to settle scores either. I mean, it's either one or the other. So, this if this is what actually happened, and I'm not saying it's not what happened. I'm just saying that if it is what happened, if the official story is true, this is a novel case. This is a very novel case, and I think that we're going to need more time. We're going to need more information. The Providence Police Department is going to have to interview witnesses and um I'm going to be looking into this a little bit further. So, it's odd. I also think it's odd. That's why I wanted to talk about it. So, moving out west, another very strange one, but also not really surprising. Strange, but not surprising. That's probably the West Coast in general these days. This took the form of four members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front being rolled up for attempting to create IEDs to detonate throughout Los Angeles this New Year's Eve. Once again, this series of arrests is what has prompted a lot of international uh responses in the form of cancelling fireworks and crowds and things like this. This is interesting because these four individuals were not the only people in the Turtle Island Liberation Front. This is a larger movement uh which is well, let me see, how should I describe this group? The Turtle Island Liberation Front is more like an offshoot of Antifa. They're all kind of in the same realm. See, one thing you have to understand about the far-left groups is that they love their labels, right? So, they love their names. They love their splinter groups because everybody has to have a title, right? Everybody has to have some kind of authority. That's what this is really uh one of the big uh traits of some of these far-left groups is that they're they're nested within groups within groups within groups. And in this case, these people are part of a smaller Splinter Cell within the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which is affiliated with Antifa and other far-left groups. It's a nightmare of names and acronyms. So, just suffice it to say that these four people are not the entire group. These are just four people who were rolled up uh for blowing up or trying to create IEDs to blow up stuff in Los Angeles. So that's how they were rolled up. They were creating IEDs out in the desert. They had been under surveillance for some time because of course they were. I mean, look at their mug shots. You can tell these guys would of course be on a government watch list rather quickly. And why is this, you might ask? Well, because they weren't exactly hiding uh their behavior. These people use their real names on social media. They published very violent rhetoric openly, not even in closed groups, just openly on Facebook, right? Where this stuff can flourish. So while the FBI is patting themselves on the back for rolling these people up, this is a case that Mr. Magcoo could crack, right? So even the most incompetent uh person could see that these people were a clear and present danger to society. Why? Because that's what they said about them their own selves. So as you might expect, most of the ideology on these people's web pages is very contradictory. So Turtle Island, just for instance, is a reference to what they claim Native Americans referred to America as. which is not really historically true. That's something that was really just kind of created recently, but you know, revisionist history is kind of the way that it works with a lot of these groups. But either way, the Turtle Island reference is more of a uh Native American kind of thing. And pardon me for saying so, but these four mug shots don't exactly look like Native Americans. But anyway, you've got that uh sort of thing going on. The whole like, you know, you're on stolen land kind of ideology. So, there's that. Plus, most of the rhetoric that they have on their web pages is um pro Palestine, but also like pro whatever acronym you want to say for gay issues nowadays. So, again, very contradictory ideology, but a lot of their stuff is uh very sympathetic towards uh Hamas in general. So, you know, there's that that'll get you on a watch list pretty quickly uh anywhere in the world these days. But the interesting part of this whole story, the reason why going on this rant is worthwhile is because these people are not the only people in their group. And the FBI is patting themselves on the back after they arrest the weirdest looking people in the group when there are other groups out there. They could have arrested like 500 people that are part of these groups or at least questioned a lot of these people. You hop in these Facebook groups with these people. They're not even Facebook groups. They're just Facebook pages. and you look at the people and look at the people making comments and it's like, all right, you got the four weirdest looking people in the group, but you still got a hundred other insurgents out there who openly state they're trying to conduct IED attacks. So once again, pardon me for not exactly trusting the FBI to stop terrorist attacks this New Year's Eve, but I guess we'll have to see. I mean, head on a swivel, right? That's the that's the moral of the story these days. Keep your head on a swivel. That is for sure. So, and speaking of keeping your head on a swivel, let's move over to Taiwan and talk about the Taipei terror attack that took place the other day. This is, of course, the unfortunate stabbing attack that took place at the Jean Jehan subway station in downtown Taipei. Now, this attack meets the criteria for being classified as a complex coordinated attack or CCA. We used to call these complex attacks or just complex terrorist attacks. What makes this a complex attack or the modern term complex coordinated attack or CCA? Well, there are usually two criteria. either multiple people involved in the attack or multiple weapons systems involved in the attack. And in this case, it was a lone attacker. However, he did switch weapons and he did target multiple venues. So, that does make it a complex coordinated attack, which is a little bit more than just your uh average garden variety terrorist attack these days. The general overview of how the attack began is very interesting because it shows a very high level of planning for how the attack was to be carried out. So, the attacker began at the main subway station to the south uh in which he threw a few smoke grenades inside the subway station. Now, at the time, this was treated as a prank and nobody really knew what was going on. So, they evacuated the station because it's a big station. It's the main train. It's the main subway station for Taipei. And uh in the process, they kind of started figuring out what was going on. Well, by then, the asalent had moved on to the other attack site. But at this first attack site before he moved on, he apparently had made contact with a citizen who was trying to stop him. And this citizen attempted to stop the attacker at this first site. But again, this all happened within the span of just a few minutes. So it took some time before people figured out exactly what was going on. The truth of the matter is that the individual, the attacker in this case, threw smoke grenades at the main subway station as a diversion. And when those smoke grenades were going off, he transited north to the Jean Shan subway station to conduct his actual stabbing attack. Now, we don't know if he took the subway to that station or if he went uh on surface roads on foot. Either way, what he was planning to do is have a diversion at the main subway station and or potentially detonate some IEDs there. So, uh like I said, reports are conflicting, but it looks like he actually had IEDs staged at the main subway station as well. So again, Taiwanese authorities are not exactly being forthcoming about this one, but from what we can piece together, it looks like he wanted to ignite a bag full of Molotovs at the main subway station in addition to using smoke devices at that main subway station attack site. And from there, he he transited north to the Zan station where he conducted the stabbing phase of his attack. Again, using even more smoke obscurance to cause mass pandemonium. So this guy was on a roll. he was really trying to cause a bunch of mayhem. But it turns out that unfortunately these types of attacks are just so rare in Taipei that not a whole lot of people even noticed. And we can see this in the video of the attack. I'm sure many of you have have have seen this and uh commented on it. I'm not going to show the full clip because it does show the attack uh taking place, but when this guy is in the middle of the street in downtown Taipei at a heavy intersection, right, he starts throwing smoke grenades and takes out this huge, you know, Bowie knife, right? or like miniature machete. Most of the people around him just can't can't believe their eyes. They're just frozen or they they're not even paying attention, right? So, this is um something that is it's unfortunate. Uh I don't necessarily know that you can really blame anybody. Uh because these kinds of attacks are extremely rare in Taipei. I think the last attack like this was over 10 years ago in Taipei. They just don't have this sort this thing sort of thing just doesn't happen in Asia that often. So, I guess the lesson learned here is, you know, head on a swivel. You know, you may be standing on the street one day and you may see a terrorist attack getting ready to to take place. And I can tell you, I I know it is going to be very hard to come to the conclusion or come to the assessment while standing on a street corner that you're witnessing a terrorist attack. It is a very hard thing to wrap your mind around. You've got to run through a whole lot of thoughts really quickly to come to this kind of conclusion. But this is something that you have to kind of be aware of because these kinds of things is definitely a case of you never think it can happen to you, right? And when we have a whole society who thinks that well it could never happen to me. Well, what do we call that in the in the sciences? We call that the bystander effect, right? And unfortunately, not to point fingers or or, you know, blame anybody with this, the bystander effect was definitely in in play here. Now once the once the attacker conducted the stabbing attack after the first few people were stabbed you know all bets were off right people realized oh my gosh this guy's attacking people now so from there you know the response was quite proper we don't really know what the police response was though all we know is that somehow he got up into a high-rise building and jumped. Uh that's that's all we know. Uh there's really nothing much more than that. Uh we don't have any conclusion. We don't know why he did this. There's no manifesto been released to my knowledge, at least not yet. And that's basically it. Uh so, you know, one of those things where we're just going to have to wait and see what the details are of this because this again, this kind of thing doesn't happen in Taiwan very often. So, again, please keep your head on a swivel. And of course, another segue into keeping your head on a swivel is the Bondi Beach terror attack that took place last Sunday. Again, a mass shooting striking a nation that is not really known for mass shootings. Uh this is something to be aware of. So the official story is that this attack was carried out by two people, not three that we first uh first surmised or first assessed based on the video. It was actually a father-son team who decided to carry out a uh jihadist style attack at a public venue, Bondi Beach Park in Sydney. There's a lot of information warfare going on about this one, so I'm trying not to to say anything inaccurate here, but it looks like they were probably targeting uh either a Hanukkah event at that was being held at the park or because it was a nice uh Sunday, they could have just been targeting everybody there. I don't know. The official uh Australian government story is that they were specifically targeting the Hanukkah event that was there. I cannot verify that. But again, this goes back to that terrorism doctrine that I mentioned earlier. We have to understand what was the motivation for this. Did these attackers attack this venue because it was hosting a Jewish event, the the Hanukkah event. Did they specifically choose that target because of that or did they just show up to any crowded venue? Right? Because there were a lot of people there and it's a Bondi Beach Park is a very popular park on the weekends. So the answer to that question is going to provide indications and warnings of future attacks. That's why even though it may be politically incorrect, we have to get to the truth. And in this case, I just I just don't know. And this distinction matters. We need to get to the truth right now. This is a time-sensitive issue because this story is not over yet. A couple of days after this main shooting took place, seven militants were arrested by counterterrorism police in two separate vehicles in Liverpool, just on the outskirts of Sydney. And per the authorities, they were arrested because they were transiting to Bondi Beach to conduct another terror attack at that same location and or in a general in the general vicinity of Bondi Beach. Now, as if the alarm bells were not ringing in your head loud enough already, it turns out the next day after these guys were detained, most of which, by the way, were on terrorist watch list per the government sources. They the the government says that they were on terrorist watch list. They were known terrorists. They were let go. All seven of these militants who are described as militants by the government, they are described as terrorists by the government have been released. So, not to cause a mass panic or anything, but the situation is a little bit risky in Sydney right now. So, yeah. Uh I mean, I'm sorry. I don't really have much more for you on that. I'm I'm struggling to contain my incredility here because I mean you've got a very very bad mass shooting taking place at Bondi Beach and that's bad enough, right? That's that's that's horrible enough. And then on top of that, you've got your counterterrorism agencies telling you, "Hey, we rolled up two two vehicles here. They're full of uh military age males. We've got seven MAMS in lockup. We are holding them on suspicion of terrorism because we had this intelligence which has not been made public. Of course, it's not going to be made public. Uh but we're holding them because they're terrorists. Here, uh you guys do something with them. And then they let them out, you know. Um now, the the obvious rebuttal to all of this uh insanity is that, okay, well, maybe they let him maybe they let him go to uh see where they're going to go, right? To to follow them and and spy on him more. To that, I would say uh the world is not an episode of Jack Ryan as much as we may want it to be. Generally speaking, if you were to leaf through really any counterterrorism book, pamphlet, uh, Wikipedia entry even, you would find that once a terrorist cell has made the, uh, decision to commit to the attack, you should probably intervene at that point. They already had them under surveillance and not just uh, just general surveillance like all of us on the world are subject to. Now, they had a team following them. That's how they were able to actually detain two separate vehicles at the same exact time. These guys were not just getting passive surveillance. They were getting active surveillance. And why did they intervene? They intervened because they thought they had guns in the car and they were going to Bondi Beach right then, right there. And they were going to uh conduct a mass shooting. That's why they intervened because they had pretty good intelligence. Some analysts somewhere, probably a whole team of analysts said, "Hey, look, we got to get them now. We're watching them. We think they're going to conduct a terror attack, but you got to get them right now." That's why they did that. And it turns out they hadn't picked their guns up yet because that's how terrorists work. They don't tend to roll around with a trunk full of AKs. This ain't Baghdad anymore. These people are going to probably go to a safe house in Sydney, pick up their rifles from wherever they had them stashed, and then conduct the attack. They jumped the gun a little early and there we go. Now we've uh blown blown cover. So either way, uh I hate to be again alarmist. So, I hate to sound alarmist in any form or fashion, but look guys, at a certain point, we got to be serious here and uh this is a pretty serious threat and I just hope that uh authorities in Sydney can can definitely keep an eye on these guys and anybody else who they may be talking to so that we can prevent a another tragedy from occurring. So, so yeah, sorry to be such a downer this week. I just realized that this is probably one of the more serious intel updates that we've had in a while because of just the the threats remaining palpably high. I don't mean for it to be, but you know, I'm not going to sugarcoat things either. So, sometimes it is quite serious. We'll do the best that we can. There's no need to doom and gloom about it. Don't do that. No black pilling. We don't do that, right? We can definitely do the best we can, keep our head on a swivel, and uh not let this stuff get to us too much. So, even though it may not seem like we're ending on a high note, we really are because we have the chance to actually do some good. though I think that's a very positive outcome. Even though we have very palpable and very clear present and future risks right on the horizon, we now know about it. We know enough information to make decisions based off of it and we have a chance to do the right thing at the right time. And I think that's the best that we can hope for. So that's all I have for today. Let's go ahead and roll things up with the intercepted ghost net reports. This week was a little bit sparse because I chose a different SDR. So, the SDR that I normally listen to was uh down for maintenance. So, I chose one right smack dab in the middle of the country and it turns out I didn't hear very much uh because there was a lot of static and there were a lot of people using uh other modes. But, I did want to put this screenshot in there uh for those who are just kind of tangentially interested in this ghost net radio plan. Uh when it comes to jamming and things like that, it's actually far more resilient than even I thought it would be. Uh because as you can see here, all of these uh vertical lines on the waterfall here, this blue image, uh you can see that the yellow bits on that uh image were coming through just fine. So somebody was transmitting while somebody else was transmitting. Normally that washes you out. It it's like trying to speak over someone who has a megaphone, right? It's hard to do. That's what jamming is. Is just talking louder than the next guy. And it turns out that sometimes in radio, we accidentally jam ourselves or we jam each other by talking over each other. And the JS8 call program that we use for the ghost net turns out is quite resilient for even stuff like that. So somebody who is speaking over someone else turns out we can still hear that little voice too which makes it very resilient for things like intentional jamming. So I thought that was kind of an interesting note. It's not perfect. You know nothing is jamming proof but it is quite resilient even when uh even when there's a lot of people talking at once. So I thought that was pretty neat. So I wanted to share that. But that's all I have for today. Uh, thank you guys for sticking with me. Sometimes it's a it's a tough day and I think this has been kind of a long week for everybody, but the good news is is that this is the last Intel update before Christmas. I hope all of you are just as excited as I am. Uh, I have not decided on what my holiday schedule is going to be. I'm probably going to take Christmas day and the 26th off, but I haven't decided yet. So, of course, I will be monitoring the situation uh no matter what happens. And I may or may not push out a wire here and there. Uh we're going to see. I'm going to try to, you know, stick to my regular routine schedule as best I can, but hopefully nothing happens that would require me to push out a priority wire, but just in case if something happens, I will push out a priority just for you guys uh who want to be aware of what's going on around the world. So, thank you guys for all of your support. I really do thank all of you uh for your support this year. It really has meant a lot. I never really would have imagined being able to do all of this stuff uh without you guys supporting me. So, I thank you all for that very, very much. It really does mean the world. So, thank you, thank you,

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Until Update for August 17th through the 23rd, 2025. Things are moving forward at quite a rapid pace, so we've got a lot to cover this week. And let's get right to it. The flavor this week has been immigration, both at home and overseas. Around the United States, there have been many developments in the field of legal and illegal immigration and the challenges that the United States is working through on that front. and our friends across the pond are also coming to grips with some of the issues that they face that are very similar to what we're working through here in the United States with regards to legal immigration. The issue of legal versus illegal immigration is a very hard topic to broach. A lot of people are very much in favor of legal immigration but are not in favor of illegal immigration. Some people support legal and illegal immigration and other people don't support legal or illegal immigration. So, it's a hard topic to broach. It's it's kind of a a very divisive issue obviously and the one thing that unites both sides of the argument unfortunately is narcotics and crime. So the United States is doing what they can to try to combat that sort of thing. And we'll dive more into this highly divisive issue in just a moment. Similar story in the United Kingdom. The UK is facing, I would say, more more of an advanced civilizational crisis with regards to population shift and population displacement. So, we'll have to get more into that in just a moment uh to kind of understand why some of these flagging operations are very very important in the United Kingdom. But suffice it to say, a lot of these immigration problems are coming to light. And the seriousness of immigration issues, as they are very very closely linked to counter narcotics operations, has been very sharply demonstrated this week. Once again, the classic line must be uttered. The past 48 hours has been host to significant naval activity. Over the past few days, the US Navy has deployed significant naval assets, all with the goal of taking up station off the coast of Venezuela to combat drug trafficking. Originally, the US Navy, the White House, and the Pentagon all announced this effort as being really just a task force of three destroyers, which is a fairly common thing. It's not really a new thing. The US Navy, and the US Coast Guard have been conducting patrols of the Caribbean Sea and, you know, down off the coast of Narco land for a long time. So, that's not really new. What is new is sending an ARG or an amphibious ready group. Whenever a few thousand Marines embark on a MW and head down south, well, we should probably pay attention to this quite a bit. Now, this deployment by the Euima ARG has been sort of up in the air. The Euima was originally scheduled to go to sixfleet AO, which is the Med and uh Europe, right? So, she was supposed to go on a regular deployment there, but now recent statements over the past couple of days have made it sound like she's going down south to Central or South America. So, this is exactly the kind of deception operation I would expect if we are trying to put boots on ground in Venezuela, for instance. Again, right now, that's speculation. There's been no talk of that whatsoever. But, you can't ignore a few thousand Marines on board a flattop going down to uh Central America. So, we've got enough resources down there to uh put up a pretty good fight if if a war were to kick off. It could just be intimidation. It could just be a standard routine deployment kind of thing. So, I don't want to raise any alarm bells unjustly. However, we've got to keep this in mind. Uh, she was supposed to go to Europe and now at the last minute, all we're changing deployments, right, to go down to South America. And if you're trying to keep the cartel guessing, right, then that's exactly what you would do. Also, what you would do is send a task force of three destroyers down there to, you know, allegedly in heavy air quotes combat uh ships at sea, right? conduct a visit board search and seaure or VBSS operations when really the Eegis ships are down there to provide missile defense. We saw the exact same thing happen in the Middle East. Remember a couple of months ago we saw that oh there just so happened to be one day like three or four aircraft carriers right within range of anything that might go wrong. So the same kind of flavor certainly appears to be undertaken right now in the Atlantic. What is going to happen? I don't know. It could just be a standard deployment or a show of force. The White House loves their shows of force, don't they? So, it could just be a posturing thing, but something to keep keep an eye on over the next few days. You'll probably see me writing quite a bit about this. And I'm going to be extra attentive to look for any signs of largecale conflict or some kind of action down there. So, as we can see from the overall strategic movement, things are getting pretty serious when it comes to counter cartel and counter narco operations and more importantly, how these are tied to immigration issues here in the United States. So here at home in the United States, we have had a lot of kinetic events occur this week, but the one that I wanted to mention is the announcement, the recent announcement by the White House that the National Guard is going to be deployed to 19 states now uh to assist with immigration issues, to assist with crime initiatives and so on. As of right now when I'm recording this, I don't have a whole lot of details on what's going on with this, but I do have the list of states which are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. So again, 19 states where National Guard soldiers are going to be activated federally, I'm guessing, for anti-rime initiatives and to assist with immigration efforts. Once again, very few details. I'm very curious as to see what title orders these guys are going to be on because as we can see these are mostly conservative states. So I don't know if the governors are going to be the in the chain of command here or if this is a federal deployment. I'll know I'm sure by the time this brief comes out but this is just something to keep in mind. The total number of soldiers deployed is going to be around 1,700. So we're not talking a whole lot. But if we remember from the COVID era when a lot of National Guard uh deployments were occurring, what we saw is just a dozen soldiers here, a dozen soldiers there, maybe a hundred tops in this one city, and then suddenly they got a lot bigger. So, same thing with the whole deployment to DC post J6, right? That was a a a thing where they tried to hide the numbers a lot. I'm not saying the two these, you know, really sort of nefarious kind of historical things are linked to what's going on now, but it's something to keep an eye on because 1700 can become 17,000 really quickly and nobody would know because they're going off of the old numbers. So, I don't know. It's something to keep an eye on. It's interesting how we've gone from Washington DC still being a crimeridden hell hole just with a lot of uniformed guys walking around and now we've expanded to the entire United States, right? Things are so much up in the air these days, but for right now, at this snapshot in time, President Trump has stated that Chicago is next. They're going to deploy National Guard to Chicago. And after Chicago, they're going to go to New York. That's the story as of right now. And then now we've learned that it's actually 19 states, none of which include New York or Illinois. So, I don't know if we're going to add New York and Illinois to this list to become 21 states. I I don't know. Either way, we're just going to have to see how this works out, but rest assured, I am going to be watching this quite carefully. Things are changing by the day, and we're just going to have to take things as they come. And speaking of the whole uh immigration issue, I wanted to issue a brief update to the Chadari family uh smuggling operation, human trafficking, child slavery operation in Omaha, Nebraska. So, as of uh yesterday, a couple of local news media groups have discovered that two of the four hotels have been closed down, or at least they had, you know, law enforcement closed for investigation signs on the front doors of these hotels. Zero communication, of course, from the owners of the hotels because the owners of the hotels are in prison right now. But the hotels that were closed were the New Victorian and the American. Uh, however, the other two, they're owned by the same people and the same family. They seem like they're still open. It's hard to say. They may have been closed overnight. If the first two are closed, I would assume the second two are going to be closed as well. But one interesting detail that came out from the local um news media talking about this is of course the news media, local local news stations especially are going to come at this from a specific angle. And the angle that the news media was coming at this story from is the customer service impact to this. So really the local news was focusing not on the fact that children were being held as slaves at these hotels. They kind of ignore that part. But what they are focusing on is the inconvenience of people showing up to check into their hotel room or being evicted from their hotel rooms wi with zero notice. Right? So they're talking about a lot of that, which of course should not be surprising to anyone. But one detail that they kind of passively let on is that a lot of these hotels were used as long-term residences by people who could not get lodging any other way. This by itself is ordinarily not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people are living in hotels nowadays simply because the situation is pretty dang desperate in some places around the country. So that's not a any kind of nefariousness on its own. What is nefarious is the fact that you've got a lot of long-term customers and a lot of long-term residents at a hotel where there is child slavery taking place. That is very suspicious because this could be a much larger slavery child trafficking network than we knew that it was, right? Surely people who lived there long term would know whether or not there's kids being employed at this place to clean rooms and stuff like that. So much more investigation is needed. So at least the feds are doing something in this case thankfully for once. But again, it's a day late and a dollar short, right? This is almost 3 weeks after the initial arrests, right? The fact that there were not closed signs on the hotel the very day the raids occurred is disturbing. But three weeks later, uh hopefully not that many more children were trafficked in that, you know, 2 or 3 week time frame. And hopefully the other two uh sites that we've identified and the whole world has identified will be shut down fairly soon as well. But no guarantees on any of that. So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see. monitor these kind of things because unfortunately nowadays the average citizen has to advocate and urge the feds to actually arrest someone when a crime is committed. So that's just kind of the way that it is and a lot of times there's not a whole lot the average citizen can do. So getting down to the actual regions today, this is more of a nationwide concern, but I did want to remind everyone that the FDA recall on the radioactive shrimp has expanded because of course it has. This is of course a shell game of food distribution. So the company PT Bahari Makmmore Sajati is actually known in the US as BMS foods which is an Indonesian company and they sell raw shrimp or frozen shrimp to two other companies at least two other companies in this case Southwind Foods and Beaver Street Fisheries and those companies repackage that shrimp as their own brand. Well, this becomes a problem when four shipping containers full of shrimp uh were detected to be radioactive or contaminated with the radioactive isotope cesium 137. Cesium 137 is of course uh produced as a byproduct of nuclear fishision. And it is of course something that you would not typically want in your seafood. Now, just to hammer home the importance of this, I don't really care about the frozen shrimp. The frozen shrimp are irrelevant to be honest because the FDA has stated that the shrimp themselves were not necessarily contaminated. They're potentially contaminated. What was contaminated? The shipping containers that these shrimp were shipped in, which is the more concerning part because four shipping containers were discovered at the same time at four different ports, Miami, Los Angeles, Savannah, and Houston, and all four were radioactive. There could be more containers than that. They're really keeping tight lipped on this sort of thing because this is very obviously a very big counterterrorism concern. So bottom line, a food contamination issue could have just accidentally highlighted the concern that maybe some radiological supplies were smuggled into the United States or at least were attempted to be. There is some debate about this uh quite a bit as to whether or not you would find cesium 137 in say something like a dirty bomb or some kind of radioactive contamination. It's hard to say. There's a lot of back and forth on that, but just speaking very generally, when a shipping container shows up in one American port and it's radioactive, that's a little concerning because you're wondering what was in that shipping container before, what was it next to? But when four shipping containers, at least four, uh, shipping containers show up at four different ports all around the United States, that's a little bit more of a concern. Now, just to balance this out, I know that a lot of people are going to freak out uh once they discover once they actually read the story and find out that it's not the shrimp, it's the containers. Once the social media influencer circle reads the articles for once, people are going to get spun up over this. Uh, and it's interesting, but radioactive stuff tries to come into the United States a lot. So, I don't know. I'm I would be very very interested to hear a press statement by uh Customs and Border Patrol on this to see what they've got to say and what they're willing to say. And I think they should be asked the questions of what's the deal with this, you know, what's the history? What's this company's deal? And so on. I mean, if it's just a case of unsanitary conditions like the FDA is saying, okay, fine. But I want to hear that from the people who know what a dirty bomb looks like, not the FDA, right? They've clearly isolated the isotope, which is not that hard to do. A lot of the handheld scanners that are used by customs to scan stuff for, you know, contamination, they can do this on the fly, but sampling the actual radioactive particles, the dust or whatever is on these containers would would be helpful. And they can definitely isolate where that source came from. So, if it was part of say like the Fukushima leak from a few years ago, just some kind of contamination tied to that, that would be very nice to know. But just be wary about what you see on social media over the next few days because I guarantee you people are going to start freaking out about this. And uh really it's just one of those things where more temperance is needed. Sort of in the same vein of panic is the revelation in Washington DC the other day that there are 55 million visa holders in the United States and the White House is looking at investigating all of those visa holders for potential immigration fraud like visa overstays. That's a really common thing. And as one might imagine, uh, this has really resulted in the general public saying, "How many visa holders are there?" Yeah, it turns out 55 million is kind of a lot. Uh, so the White House has been really kind of trying to avoid this question, I think, because the White House is most certainly all about legal immigration, right? That's what the the Trump administration is very much uh hanging their hat on. A lot of conservative power players are also uh really trying to focus on halting the illegal immigration while bringing forth more legal immigration. And it turns out that 55 million legal visitors to the United States is still a pretty big number. So I just wanted to remind everyone that the US population is around 340 million, at least that's what they're publicly stating it to be based on the last census data. And if you add on 55 million people to that, that's a pretty big percentage as far as what illegal immigration is. I mean, if there's 55 million legal visitors here that could get visas, then you would have to assume that there are more illegal immigrants, right? That's a pretty big revelation. And since that just came out yesterday, I think a lot of people are trying to come to terms with it and figure out what this actually means because yeah, it's a big number. And uh it turns out that this is a probably a much larger problem than we had originally previously identified. And that brings us to Florida, more specifically Mr. Hargender Singh and his recent arrest for his involvement in causing the crash that killed three people on the Florida Turnpike a couple of weeks ago. I have been investigating Mr. Singh here just as a very interesting thought experiment. And it turns out, as you could probably assume very easily based on the story, that Mr. seeing is not at the center of this uh story. So, some of you have already seen it, but I'm not going to show my full homework on this just yet because a little bit of discretion is necessary when tracking some of these networks. But the short version of this is that Mr. Singh is not the center of this. Harender Singh worked for a company called White Hawk Carriers, which can be traced back to one Navnet Cower who is probably acting as a registered agent service. So once you investigate Navni Cower a little bit, you can find out that this individual, which I'm assuming is a female because most of the names I searched came up as female. So I'm just going to call her a she. But this individual, it turns out to be the owner and registered agent of a lot of very similar companies that are nearly identical to White Hawk carriers, all of which are registered at a different address, which is usually a residential address. So what's going on here? Uh, this is seems like an interesting data point, but what's going on here? Well, you might be tempted to think that Miss Navit Cow here is the center kingpin in all of this. That's probably not it. She is probably just the paperwork boss, right? She's probably just the person who is registering these companies for illegal immigrants because even in California, some of these people who may have criminal records don't want to be popping up in LLC databases. So, that's probably what's going on here. I have a lot more evidence to back that up, but it's it's a fairly common thing to see. I know that this link analysis chart here looks a little bit busy and you can kind of see where Harender Singh is in this whole thing and Miss Nav Cower here is the that green dot which is at the center of all these other LLC's and other locations and businesses and things like that. So, there are links between a lot of these and I am currently developing this out. This is just my homework as of a few days ago, but I just wanted to show you that this is much larger than just one guy in a truck, which makes sense at face value, right? But in this case, you might be expecting it to have like a CEO and then underneath the CEO, you've got different branch divi division heads and then maybe underneath that you've got uh different uh parts of the company all with co-workers and it's, you know, a nice neat hierarchy. Well, in the case of a lot of these truck driving networks, they're not you really have to track them using the mentality of counterinsurgency. Now, of course, not all of these people are terrorists, right? But when it comes to tracking them and trying to develop out these networks, you can very clearly see these are cellular networks. There's one group of people that is not connected to another group of people, but they're linked by a common point such as a registered agent. So even if these companies are not talking to one another, they're all still managed by a central point. And who's controlling that central point, right? I want to know who Navnet Cower is working for. She may not be working for anybody. She may just be opportunistic because a lot of these uh companies I'm finding are registered in the exact same building. Like if you were to look at the building on Google Maps, across the street is an immigration services office. So something that helps people get citizenship. So the bottom line is that this is a very interesting investigative line of effort because we want to know who's accountable, right? Obviously Harender Singh here, he's been arrested. He's going to jail for a long time because he killed three people. But the next question you must ask, especially if you live in a society and you want accountability, is who did he work for? Well, he worked for White Hawk Carriers. But did he? This could just be his own LLC that he's got registered through somebody else and he's just acting alone. My own investigation seems like that's not really the case. A lot of these are linked together. But in any case, this one guy's incident has identified and really brought to light just how pervasive this problem is. Now, I don't want to make it out to look like this is some kind of grand new revelation. No, there are a lot of people, especially people who are in the trucking industry, who have been shouting and screaming about this for many, many, many years. It's just nobody's listened to them because logistics is boring, right? And nobody cares about the issues of trucking, even though they absolutely should. So, please don't think I'm stumbling upon something grand and un unrevealed. No, this is this has already been wellnown for a very long time. It's just that now is a good time because we're looking at all of these other immigration issues. Now is a good time to reassess what's going on here because now people for once in their life are actually paying attention to what's going on around them. And unfortunately, I think there's also a lot of information manipulation. A lot of people will point and shout and say, "Oh, look at this guy. Look how evil he is. He's just a terrible, terrible person." Right? But then they don't go the next step further and say, "All right, well, we can hold this guy accountable." Sure, that's easy enough. But can we hold accountable the registered agent who is breaking even California law by registering a bunch of businesses in her name that she doesn't own? You see, it's just a paper mill, right? It's just an LLC paper mill is a shell game. That's what it is. And we we want to hold the guy accountable because we've got a mean looking photo of him. But nobody wants to go to the next step and say, "Well, let's dismantle this network here. Let's look into these addresses. This this guy's address is listed right on the California Secretary of State's website. It's not like it's that hard. And the feds have other databases. You can look and see how many people with visas, how many how many visa holders listed as their mailing address, the same address used for this guy. This is simple stuff. So, we've definitely got to to keep uh keep pressure on this sort of thing because unfortunately there is only so much the average citizen can do. I can sit here and talk all day long on YouTube and I can sit here and show you all of my research, but I have no power at the end of the day. I can't go out and issue an arrest warrant for all of these people I've identified. I would like to, but I can't. I don't work for government. And we are beholden to an attorney general somewhere or a federal agency somewhere to actually do their job. And so far, in most cases, the same people who have been employed in government forever are still employed under the Trump administration, which is why you see a lot of times not a whole lot being done. In this case, one guy was arrested. That is fantastic. This is good. We can give him his due process and we can he can explain himself in court, but I would also personally like Miss Need Cower to see the inside of a courtroom and explain why she's registering so many businesses to illegal immigrants in her state. So anyway, this shows how spicy things have have gotten around the United States, but things have gotten even spicier uh in the United Kingdom across the pond. So I of course mean the flagging operations that have taken place throughout uh England over the past few days. This has been rapidly become a very big social thing that has occurred throughout the country. And for an American audience, I thought I would explain just a little bit. Throughout most of Europe, it's fairly odd. It's fairly strange to see national flags flying really anywhere. Uh the concept of having your national flag displayed like at your front door or something like that, that's definitely an American thing. The concept of patriotism as Americans know it just does not apply anywhere else in the world or actually it does. It's just not Western Europe. So, Western uh Europe, Eastern Europe as well tend to not have like national flags out uh as much as you might expect. And in the UK, things have gotten quite severe over the past few years with regards to what is considered to be a hate crime. So much so that flying the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, uh displaying that flag at say like a Hindu cultural event, that can actually get you arrested, right? much more so the flag of England which is the St. George's Cross which not only conveys the idea of the English people, right? But also there's a saint involved, right? So a Christian component to this is uh equally uh forbidden in many many circumstances in the UK unfortunately. And over the past few days, a huge and I mean huge effort has been undertaken to conduct flagging operations, which is probably the best way to describe it. And what this is is super simple. It's literally just putting the English flag up in England. That's it. That's what this is. Uh some people have taken to graffiti, so painting what they call zebra crossings, pedestrian crossings, right, with red paint to make the pedestrian crossings look like little St. George's flags. So, you can kind of understand how that's a little bit more secret, but generally speaking, one of the primary ways that the British people are showing acts of resistance is simply putting up their own na nation's flag within their own nation. Now, again, to an American audience, this seems incredibly sad. Uh, and it may be, but I would rather focus on the the good part of this, right? So, there's a lot of people who are trying to do the right thing and inspire and bring a lot of hope to the English people and potentially facing arrest or great violence to do so. A few flagging uh teams have been roughed up pretty bad when they get caught. And one guy was hit in the head uh injured pretty severely last night. And Steven is just north of London where again he's trying to conduct flagging in an area and someone threw a Molotov cocktail at him, but it hit him right in the head. So pretty pretty violent sort of thing. You know, the British people are having to risk imprisonment and serious bodily harm just to put up their own nation's flag. And it's a good thing that we're starting to see this level of resistance come out. I think resistance to what exactly? I don't know if you can even define it. Just just resistance to all the badness of the world. Uh, one of the ways to do that is to bring a sense of shared unity and shared national identity because the United Kingdom, much like the United States, is facing an identity crisis. Theirs is much worse than ours, of course. And one of the ways that you can start to identify what does it mean to be an Englishman? What does it mean to be a Scott? What does it mean to be Welsh? Right? Well, the land of Albon is uh figuring this out right now. And they're going to have to figure it out over the next few years, too. This is one of those things that is within the realm of uh the English to start to bring to the table. It's peaceful, doesn't hurt anybody, and it's less it's less vandalism than is uh has been conducted by official government agencies to plaster rainbow flags and all other kinds of paraphernellia all over government buildings. So basically, there's no way to complain about this that doesn't make you sound crazy because there's the flag of India and Pakistan being flown over government buildings. So, this is one of those things that's very innocent and harmless and even the most hardline uh immigration supporter can't really have an avenue of approach for attacking people who want to put up their own flag in their own nation. So, it's an easy thing to do and it is a point of shared unity which is a good thing to see. So, for once ending on a positive note, maybe not a positive context, but a positive note and I think that's a great thing to see. So, good luck to to our friends across the pond and we will see how this works out over the next few days and weeks. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's wrap things up again with the intercepted ghost net reports. Again, another good week. A lot of people uh starting to use the ghost net for exchanging information and doing testing and use a more off-grid manner of communicating. Fantastic to see. These things are very important. Again, the context of uh satellite communication devices such as Starlink and a lot of the direct to cell satellite stuff that's being worked on by major cellular carriers. All of that stuff is good and and absolutely uh necessary to see. But we also want to have a backup, don't we? And radio is one of those ways, especially HF radio is one of those ways to communicate over very long distances with potentially hundreds or thousands of people with nobody in between and nobody really practically being able to jam it either. The ghost net, for example, uh has been jammed quite a lot, both intentionally and unintentionally, and the network hasn't really suffered that much for it. It's still quite effective. It still works. And it may not be perfect. It may be very antiquated, very hard to use, very expensive, and there's a lot of uh cultural problems too within radio, but this is still one line of effort that we can do, one thing in our lives that we can actually control somewhat. And it's a good way to make sure that we can talk to whoever we want to with nobody being able to stop us. So, thank you for all of you who make the ghost net a great thing to see. It would not be what it is without all of you contributing to it and using it and finding it to be a useful thing. Otherwise, it's just me, a crazy dude on the internet with a frequency, and that's not helpful for everybody. But all of you have taken this project and run with it. And now the whole thing is running semi-autonomously, right? I don't have to issue reminders or do anything myself. It just it just flows, right? And that's a good thing to see. It will get better over time. I'm working on the next version of the plan right now. And I I really hope that over the next year we can incorporate some of the more nonrai-based uh stuff into the plan to make it a little bit easier for people to communicate using different methods. I'll just leave it at that. So, thank you again for all of your support. Uh here are the sources as usual. And of course, you can uh get clickable links and uh more information from my Obsidian page. But that's pretty much all I have for today. Thanks again, and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for July 19th through the 25th 2026. It's Groundhog Day once again with the war in the Middle East ramping back up and civil issues here in the US flaring up again as well. So let's get right to it. Around the world this week, conflict is the theme once again. Within the Middle East, the war is back on and escalating with the Houthis now bringing the war to the Red Sea. Over in Europe, the war in Ukraine is continuing to expand to threaten new areas with the nation of Kazakhstan halting the flow of oil through their pipelines that transition through Russia to the Black Sea. On the home front this week, there is one item of note I wanted to mention in more depth as this has a potential to be a very serious problem in due time. In Minnesota Thursday night, the Shiloh Hendrick's case came to a conclusion as she was convicted of one count of disorderly conduct for calling a Somalian man a name while being harassed on a Rochester playground in May of last year. Of note, the Somalian told her to call him the name, and she was acquitted of calling the child the name. As a reminder of the details of that case, the child, who was originally claimed to be 5 years old, but was actually 9 years old, was discovered by Hrix to be digging through her diaper bag on the playground, which prompted her to confront the child. The child had a history of being unruly to the point that the 9-year-old child was already wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor. The incident devolved into Hendrickx calling one of the Somalian men accompanying the child a name before a second Somalian man intervened, recording the now viral video that resulted in the 4-day jury trial for a misdemeanor. This case is worthy of note as this case effectively decides whether or not white Americans have the right to freedom of speech. There was no violence. There was no harassment. The only person being harassed was Hendricks on the playground that day because she actually was stolen from. Theft is a bigger crime than speech crimes, but not in Minnesota. Apparently, this ruling effectively decides that a Somali can harass an American mother in a playground, and another Somalian can also chime in and record a video of himself harassing her, telling her to call him a name, and she be the one who potentially goes to jail for this. And that man, by the way, the star witness in the case, who was called the name, is not even in America anymore. He fled back home to Somalia immediately after the incident last year. This highlights the fact that we as a nation have a problem that cannot be solved by conventional means, but this case is more serious than speech. Sharmake Ble Omar, one of the two Somalian men at the center of this case, was actually at the park under questionable means in the first place. Omar had previously been arrested and charged for his role in kidnapping and raping a child in 2022, but the charges were dropped with no explanation once the victim aged out of the state's foster program. The victim has not been heard from since. If Omar had been held accountable back then, he would not have been hanging around a playground to get his feelings hurt by a word. As always, I will be keeping a sharp eye on this case because in the US, the word precedent only ever seems to work in one direction. So, I will expect a lot more people to be rounded up around the country for saying words now that this is on the books. Using extreme restraint to avoid fed posting on this uh scandal, I will just say that this case is a reminder that our justice system is utterly broken and the civil strife that results from this base fact is going to be hard to predict moving forward. So, I'll just leave it at that. Jumping over to Europe this week, the war in Ukraine has continued to escalate by land and sea. Ukraine has continued to strike warehouses belonging to wildberries throughout Russia. And so far, a total of nine logistics hubs have been struck by Ukrainian forces over the past week or so. This is Russia's version of Amazon. And though Ukraine is using the excuse of Russia using this ecosystem to support the war effort, the Ukrainians are claiming that since Wildberries sells like toy drones or like commercial off-the-shelf drones that this is now a military target. That's what they're claiming at least from the Ukrainian side. The truth of the matter is that this is mostly a civilian target that is meant to put the squeeze on the civilian population. This is Ukraine trying to punish the average Russian populace and that is very hard to deny. It's also more of an economic effort because a lot of very powerful Russian businessmen will now be lobbying Putin for missile defenses for their warehouses. So, at the wavetop level, this is a major indicator of how the war in Ukraine is sliding into more of an unrestricted warfare situation. Unrestricted warfare again is a very dangerous term to be waving around because it usually means total war. We're not quite there yet, but Russia and Ukraine have both been observed to strike civilian infrastructure, civilian targets, either intentionally or unintentionally. It's going to be hard to say, but generally speaking, this is not good. Due to a variety of factors, the targeting of civilian infrastructure has been carried out around the world more regularly to the point that it's now normalized. Now the headlines read out that Ukraine has started striking Russian Amazon and nobody gives it a second thought. The escalation trap takes over and the war gets really really nasty really quickly. And for anyone in the United States who thinks that the war in Ukraine doesn't affect you directly other than tax dollars being involved, it affects you now purely due to one word, petroleum. Oh, how history rhymes this week. NATO's version of Army Group South has now begun to threaten the Caucus oil fields. And I would bet that David Glance, the famous military historian, has sensed a disturbance in the force this week. This week, Kazakhstan has also shut down their network of pipelines that transfer crude across the Russian step in the vicinity of stop, excuse me, Vulgar on their way to the oil terminals in the Black Sea. It may be too soon to tell, but it certainly looks like within the next few weeks or even months, Ukraine is probably looking to expand the drone war at least to more and more petroleum infrastructure throughout the Caucus region and beyond. This matters because Kazakhstan is now involved in the war and they are a major producer of oil at least for the region. I'm not sure about the whole world export of Kazakhstan's oil supply, but these pipeline networks which have now been shut down due to the threats posed by Ukrainian drones actually provided the world with 1.4 million barrels per day. In terms of the Middle East, that's a drop in the bucket. But in terms of all the other oil supplies around the world, it's not insignificant. Just for context, the United States has touted Venezuela as being a source of petroleum for the United States during the Hormuse crisis. Every time a White House official gets hit with the oil question, they always say, "Well, we've got plenty of oil and we've got Venezuela, too." But Venezuela only produces around half a million barrels of oil per day. And that was before the major earthquake. Kazakhstan just shut down three times that amount from the global energy market. And no American media seems to have picked up on it yet. Or if they have, they don't care. But they should care because we now have two smaller wars that have become effectively three wars with the addition of the Houthies which now involve a section of the Earth from Poland to India. I am now having to zoom out so far on my maps I might as well be using a globe at this point. Just looking at this from the altitude of halfway to the moon. We can see the scale of what's going on here. For almost half a year, we've been watching these little explosion icons crawl across the screen, expanding to strike new locations every day. Just looking at the map, we can see that this is not a special military operation or a minor excursion. With these two conflicts becoming linked together by petroleum, we may need to start re-examining how we define this series of conflicts. And now that the Middle East conflicts continue to expand, this is growing more serious every day. Drilling down to the events in the Middle East this week, the situation is not looking good. American bases throughout the region have been hit regularly, almost every single day this week. And the main targets for the Iranians have been the American positions in Jordan, which have been hit more regularly for a few reasons. For one, Iran knows that their targeting effort is effective there. And if it ain't broke, they don't fix it. So they know that Americans are staged at these bases because of the second reason, which is that the US has had to reduce their presence at many of these bases due to targeting. The United States only had really a couple dozen bases in the Middle East at the height of the wars over the past 20 years. And since the war began with Iran, all of these bases have consolidated down to a few positions. Fewer positions means fewer targets. The Iranians have to hit maybe five bases, whereas the United States has to hit 10,000 launch points in Iran. It's simple mathematics and probability at that point. This consolidation of forces means that the Iranians don't actually have to get any better at targeting. There's some evidence to suggest that the Iranians have gotten better at what they're targeting. They've learned quite a lot and they're using better missiles now. But pushing that aside for a moment, they don't even have to get any better if you're consolidating forces at fewer and fewer bases. Fewer targets to hit means fewer things that can go wrong, means more missiles you can mass on one base, which is a problem. To show how this happened, let's go back in time to the early phases of the war when the US pulled out of bases like the fifth fleet headquarters in Bahrain and Aludit air base in Qar. The United States famously pulled out of these locations or relocated personnel out of these bases right during the early phases of the war because the Iranians were hitting these bases quite hard. But where did they go? Well, they mostly relocated to Jordan and deeper into Saudi Arabia. At the time, the Iranian targeting did occasionally strike these bases, but most of the Iranian drones and ballistic missiles targeted the American bases decently close to the Persian Gulf itself. So now, what's happening? Well, the American bases in Jordan are getting hit hard. So the US is having to move aircraft from the eastern bases in Jordan all the way to the west and to the south all the way down to the region of Akaba to bases still in Jordan but just on the border and also bases in Israel. This is definitely a case of they all rolled over and one fell out, right? Because the Iranians are progressively pushing the United States back farther and farther from the actual combat zone. Instead of taking four bombs on the wing, now fighter jets which are carrying out the bombing are having to carry three bombs and a drop tank. This has been the case since the beginning of the war because this has been a long range war for much of the aircraft carrying out the strikes in Iran. But now it's even worse and we seem to be escalating this war even though we are at a tactical disadvantage here. But there is one thing that we forget when we look at blurry satellite photos trying to track down aircraft. There are people here too. In most cases whenever we say something like uh Aluded is empty, what we really mean is that the airframes have moved but there are still a lot of troops at these bases. Remember, most of the aircraft that the US has been moving around are refueling tankers for the heavy bombers. These are flying gas stations, not troop transports. So implying that the US has quote unquote pulled out of some random base is always a bit misleading because we don't really know how many ground troops, support staff, and logistics personnel are still on the ground at any one location. We can just see buildings and large aircraft, but we can't see people on satellite imagery. Generally, at least with the resolution that we have, we can guess because we would see a lot of transport aircraft in and out of the region. But we again don't really know because these transports could be moving bombs in on the inbound flight and taking troops out on the return trip or they could just be bringing cargo in. It's impossible really to know in the open source world. So, this is not really a data point that we can use to form our analysis on something. This is an important detail to note because of the scale of the destruction. It is substantial. Just to put this into perspective, the US military has never, I say again, never, faced our troops being targeted with missiles as large and as substantial as the missiles our bases are being hit with during this war. The Iranians are hitting us with the largest munitions any soldier has ever been hit with. Many people during the Giwat have a concept for what it's like to get hit with a 107 mm rocket or maybe even something as big as a Scud going back to the, you know, the OG Gulf War days. Well, when it comes to the Iranian missiles, they're much, much larger. The Iranian missiles that are hitting our guys over there are no joke, and they make a 107 look like a party popper. These missiles are leaving craters that are 50 to 80 yards across, similar to a Scud in terms of the explosive content, but these are much more substantial due to the kinetic energy alone, and the guidance package is miles ahead of what any Scud could possibly have. Right? So, I should have mentioned that more regularly throughout this war because this is an important data point. But now that the Pentagon is confirmed to have lied about casualty numbers using the testimony of Assistant Secretary of War Sean Parnell himself, this is more important to note. And I suspect this is why we are starting to see more troops leak videos and photos of the damage. I will not be showing the footage uh of this one particular video because it can be used to geollocate the exact bunker on the exact base, but one video circulated on social media this week that confirmed what we already know. American fortifications throughout the region are woefully inadequate and a lot more people are going to get killed because of the combination of the inadequacy of bunkers and the high failure rate of missile defenses. These are not really combat bases in the slightest, but now they are. This is now the front line. And even though we fought the Giwat for 20 years, we did not really consider these bases to be targets in any way. I don't know how or why, but that's just the way that it is. And even though we have been fighting a war for almost half a year now, we still have not taken any measures whatsoever to fortify some of these bases. We've moved missile defenses in that we can see on satellite imagery and we can surmise based on the footage we get. I'll just leave it at that. But these defenses are not adequate at all. But as of this morning, the American bases are not the only concern at this point. Last night, the Houthis and Saudis began shooting at each other once again with the Saudis conducting strikes at the Houthi port of Huda. This is their major port facility. It's one of the Houthi strongholds throughout the western part of Yemen. And this morning, the Houthis retaliated in kind by striking the Aramco refinery north of Jazan, which is a major oil refinery really close to the Houthi border. The Saudis seem to be students of the Sunzu practice of always picking a fight and starting a war when your own nation's critical infrastructure is within striking range of the enemy and you have no defenses for them. Unlike the port of Yanbu, which has a nearby American Patriot battery, the Jazan refinery complex doesn't really have any uh missile defense at all. So, it was really easy to target. They may have moved in a couple of short range uh SAM sites, but what they would have had to have done it really recently. And even at that range, the Houthis can launch very short-range drones. They don't need to launch any highle missiles, even though that's what they hit the uh refinery with this morning. So, we'll see how that works out. But the Houthis can uh pound the Saudis for quite a while and there's not a whole lot the Saudis can do about it. Similarly, several Saudi tankers have been struck in the southern Red Sea by the Houthis and the Houthi blockade of the Saudi trade route continues and has been shown to have teeth. Even as of me recording this morning, air strikes and missile strikes alike and continue around the region at large and everything is snowballing into a much bigger problem. How big this will become, we don't know, but it's not looking super great as the danger of a wider escalation is rearing its ugly head once again. And with that, I think that wraps us up for today until the next major development occurs within a few minutes. But continuing the tradition of not ending on a cheery note, I also have some bad news for my endeavor to grab screenshots from the Ghost Net this week. As many of you know, the Ghost Net is our own little shortwave radio network, which is intended to bring more resiliency to the world of information sharing. The ghost net is set up on the principle of if we do not physically own or control the wires that information flows through, we will always be able to be affected by the entities that do control communications infrastructure. So the ghost net is a way of relying on point-to-point radio communications to share information over the airwaves all around the world. And this week I failed because a thunderstorm brought down my antenna once again. And by the time I got it fixed, the uh the net was over. So failure on my part, but despite this, the net continued on because everything is decentralized. I don't actually run anything. I'm just tuning in like the rest of you guys out there. So, many of you were able to get on the air and share a lot of information, which is good. Otherwise, I am desperately trying to work as hard as I can to get some of the more radiocentric tutorials set up. As always, literally every single thing these days takes much longer to complete than I thought it would. Uh, but I am excited for some of the newer stuff I've been trying out, such as Reticulum and some of the other radio networking options, which have turned out to be much easier than I thought to set up. More to come on that later on. Lots of cool stuff is coming soon. There have been a lot of really interesting developments in the world of technology that we can take advantage of to be more prepared in these strange and confusing times. So, that's all I've got for now. Thanks for sticking with me. Thanks for the support. And I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

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

what's going on guys so welcome to the podcast with s2 underground i want to be up front with you guys and let you know we had a couple of technical difficulties just up front starting off but when we cut in it's going to be at the very early onset of the conversation so you didn't really miss much maybe five minutes or so if you haven't heard of s2 underground these guys are really amazing it's an aggregate of intelligence analysts and they are really serious about the news they give you deep dives and analysis on things like they say they don't always come out with breaking news if you want breaking news you follow me on instagram watch my story it's all nothing but breaking news and relevant news but if you want deep dive analysis on current world events check them out now also they have a podcast here on youtube s2 underground type it in the search bar will bring you right to there how to freaking camouflage yourself from drones how to hide people escape an evasion that these guys obviously they went through sir and all that so you know they don't like disclose anything but they disclose what you need to know it's really really a great channel i can't recommend that resource for you enough all right guys so like i said we have some technical difficulties so enjoy this little bit of music and it's gonna bring you right into about five minutes into our conversation and the rest is on here for you all right stand by i know you guys are going too dressed in a dark green bottle jacket with a carbine in his hand he came to organize [Music] it's really it's been educational for me and i find uh i kind of have a hard time these days finding stuff that will really educate me that doesn't it's not very basic but you guys i mean you guys are on a different level over there i think that's probably comes from you know experience as well as extensive research that you all do yeah it's it's definitely something that we have uh we've leveraged our you know combined i think we've got probably two or three decades worth of federal intel stuff and then state intel stuff and uh you know contracting and things like that so we're using our skills you know in the best way that we can to you know give back to people in the best way that we can and which which in this case is you know educationally and uh well really lately has been providing platforms for people who have been kind of d platform so yeah and you guys have been d platform pretty hard um we were talking kind of laughing together actually right before the program started this is coming on the um january 11th 2021 yep 2021 already man can you believe it's 2021 yeah it does not seem like it already no it doesn't but anyway it's 2021 january 11th yesterday uh parlor was d platform just completely by amazon yep you guys had a huge following on instagram and then until they decided just to delete your account with no explanation given yep yeah we're on our fourth instagram account i think so yeah okay it's fourth instagram and um that's something i gotta talk to you a little more about actually because i guarantee you they're going to cut me off any day here now um i'm already being shadow banned right now and this comes after you know like them wanting to delete my threatening to delete my for like you know two three strikes now and then cutting me off from live video all of it so yeah what are we what are we really looking at here jay i mean it's not just guys like you and me either no it's it's really we're starting to see really the power of people are really saying big tech but it's really just the math and the algorithms behind it we're starting to see a lot of people that are we're starting to see not necessarily people being silenced because they are either of a certain political ideology but because they either have a voice or they point something out or they engage in a certain way that flags a certain algorithm so then they get banned that's why you're starting that's why you're seeing or rather not seeing a lot of very prominent conservative conservative like leadership and politicians get the boot but other everyday people log in and say hey my facebook account got banned for something that i never did so it's kind of a strange thing to explain i don't think anybody's really got a good explanation for exactly how it works definitely a problem it's a huge problem and i was online last night and tonight trying to figure out hey how do you get off a shadow band like how do you do but it's all it's a lot of it at least it's algorithms it's not like there's some nerd sitting behind the screen saying your band it's yeah all the machine right yeah it's abs absolutely in very few cases are we seeing deliberate people being targeted and if you know that's happening it's it's going to be like high profile targets right it's not going to be people like you know you and me who have no real reason to be banned it's going to be like higher ranking people um but yeah it's definitely something we're gonna see a lot more of especially considering the you know the web of things how everything is interconnected how people have they're gonna have like a google account or something and they get their banking information through that well now google knows about where they bank and they can subpoena that information or they can you know leverage banks we've seen that before we're probably going to see it again just to you know we could go down that rub a hole all day different things that can be done didn't they recently actually it used to be like if you take out 999 what is it 9099 or something like you you don't set off the flags but didn't they just recently lower it to like an insane amount so i'm not entirely sure exactly about that but suffice it to say uh there there are of course limits right this has been a thing since electronic banking was a thing and this is from not necessarily from big tech but from the government side of things people like at homeland and your big three letter agencies they want to make sure that people aren't moving money around and laundering it in certain ways and for a long time people were under the impression that hey there's this magic ten thousand dollar limit for hey if i spend or move around or commit a some kind of electronic bank transfer for less than that i'm not going to get caught well it's not necessarily like that these these agencies have gotten really really good at tracking the bad guys the legit bad guys and if legit bad guys can figure this out then you know normal americans don't really have a chance at avoiding it so you know we saw it with i think what was a bank of american citibank trying to tell people that they can't buy firearms with their credit card wow and that was like two years ago i'm not even really sure how that turned out but i would expect stuff like that to come back and impact you know mainstream america like us yeah that's crazy i'm waiting for the day where we see what are they called wallas or walla wallas here in uh the states with the middleman moving money around and everything yeah yeah hawala networks yeah just some dude carrying a bag of cash um i mean it works for the bad guys and unfortunately i think a lot of american you know average citizens are going to have to resort to that too shed says status actual says get some junk silver that's actually not a bad idea yeah but you know it's not like we're i mean we're just shooting the here we're not trying to you know move money or anything like that but it's just fascinating talking about the algorithms you know how you can set it off and not even freaking mean to and you're not even doing anything to begin with but for whatever reason it can mess with your life yeah it absolutely can um i think that a lot of people or at least what we've been seeing for a while now we ourselves were have been very wary of how our governmental systems can contract and do these things you know the whole ever since the snowden thing every american citizen has been concerned with what their government can and cannot see well one of the interesting paradoxes we're starting to discover now is that if a company were to come to you and say hey we're going to give you a free email service but we're going to take from you every piece of data we could possibly get everything every transaction you've ever made every photo you take every single part of your life we say hey that's great but if the government tries to do it or some kind of agency tries to do it it's if people bulk at it but they people freely give their stuff away over to really big companies without actually knowing it yeah so and it's a big problem uh big tech is becoming a big problem and i hope i don't get banned it happens very quickly too um i think we've seen just how fast big tech has moved even just with the example of um i can't remember who it was i think it was either twitter or uh apple or some some actually i think it was a google play store where they said hey we're gonna give you 24 hours parlor to fix your stuff and ban either certain content or basically just agree to that you're going to police your content on your platform and then they came back four hours later and said oh jk you only have like an hour left and then they just said screw it we're just to ban you anyway so it's uh dude it's it's been insane to be alive during these times i mean i don't know how old you are but my generation has seen um the birth of the internet the birth of a cell phone like all this technology 911 freaking iraq war like this now i'm sure you know national global pandemic it's crazy to see how things have just accelerated to such degree yeah it really is i i think as of 2020 and really this year so far i think a lot of people are going to have to change their priorities people who weren't forced to think about these things like we have been yeah they're going to start to have to be at least you think about this stuff so it's an interesting uh interesting challenge for moving forward that's for sure well you bring up a good point there man is that guys like you and i kind of you could say force but you know we we are forced to think about this stuff just due to you know the nature of who we are and what we do most people don't and they never have thought about this stuff you know and it's it really is forcing them to put it all in their face and deal with it and i don't think a lot of civilians out there honestly have the capacity to be able to do that yeah it's um it's definitely a challenge it really is we have had our own little you know micro challenges along the way and it's it's really been surprising the the sort of conspiratorial strength uh you know hold that a lot of you know technology has over people's lives um you know 10 years ago if you said the stuff that we're saying now if you said that 10 years ago you'd be crazy but now it seems like you know we have to really plan for things that sort of sounds crazy now right we're looking years years out from now and the stuff that we're saying we have to be concerned with you know the internet not existing because cloudflare and amazon web services say that it doesn't want to happen that kind of stuff we have to be concerned with now or at least start thinking about it absolutely and you know you saw guys like alex jones 10 years ago talking about this stuff and yeah it was entertaining you thought okay like maybe there's some shredded truth in there but the guy's clearly like conspiracy nut right and then yeah yeah you go like flashback a year ago right today even two years ago you got like sean hannity talking about this stuff on mainstream and news you got like everyone kind of on the same page like this is where we are yeah maybe it used to sound like a conspiracy but it's not like this is legit let's talk about it now it's crazy man yeah it's very it's very interesting to look back and see you know and of course then you know once we start looking into that stuff we run into the trap of trying to find well this guy said this thing was going to happen and he said at the same time this other thing was going to happen so does that other thing going to happen now well you know it's kind of hard to say but yeah it's it's definitely true that we have uh we've not heeded a lot of warnings for a long time with you know the the power of things and the power of certain people in the world so you know things look a lot less conspiratorial nowadays even though right now you know conspiracy theorists are having a field day with everything that's going on in the world yeah it's uh it's kind of a hard time to find good information now so it really is and and that's exactly why i wanted to have you guys on tonight or have you on as kind of the head boss over there is look you guys are putting out great material great content and it's all relevant and it's all truthful it's not most of what you guys put out is not hearsay and it's not um shall i say we think this it's it's the way that you put your news out there i can tell an analyst put it out there yeah and and that's not something that's easy to do and you know at the at the risk of sort of patting ourselves on the back too much we do have to realize that there's a trade-off we the reason that we don't really have a scheduled you know podcast that comes out at a specific date and time we don't have a 24-hour news cycle it's because the 24-hour news cycle if you're wanting to get just the information that's some that's a modern construct that's something that's manufactured some days nothing happens in the world and you just kind of got to live with it but sometimes you have to watch an event happen you have to think about it you have to realize what's going on you have to research things and by the time that people want to hear your opinion about things or by the time people want to by the time that opinion actually gets out there that analysis gets out there it's already gone it's been three days and nobody cares anymore so um we we do have a good trade-off of hey the stuff we put out is is going to be from an analytical perspective but it's not going to be instant we're not going to be replying to tweets 12 minutes after they happen it's it's going to take some time um and you know that's why uh that's why we're not so much a current events news station as we are an analytical one so no absolutely and if you guys want the current events look just check out my stories i'm pretty current with myself oh yeah absolutely yeah you've been putting out a lot a lot of good stuff lately so yeah but if you want to deep dive on what's going on behind the scenes check out s2 because they're very good at what they do i want to get to a couple of the comments real quick so i don't leave anyone out um yeah sure flesh was saying he got uh shadow band after making fun of china i thought that that's pretty funny okay um sounds about right yep yeah it does it really does uh let's see so do y'all think we will see government control the withdrawal of money from the bank is near in the near future so i guess what he's asking is if if they're gonna try to do something like uh you know no man could buy or sell save less he had the mark right right yeah so um i don't know i would say it's probably going to take a lot longer than if a bank wanted to do it if a bank wants to do something they could do it pretty quickly whereas the federal government as much as you know a lot of people are kind of scared at them especially moving into 2021 they're still pretty bad at a lot of things and there's a lot of people a lot of powerful people that have to fight each other to get anything done so i would say possibly i mean we've already seen it happen when it comes to things like certain purchases it might happen one day you know very soon where you all of your purchases are being flagged right so if you buy something at a sort of non-approved place from that the bank doesn't want to you spend spending money on that could be an issue and they could you know do something to you but once again there there's there's um it's not like they're going to be able to do that and not get away with it the way our current laws are uh courts going to see that at least you know for now so if it were to happen i would say yeah it's going to take a while they can do that now right they just have to get kind of a physical thing going or something right yeah if it's a national security type thing um yes but then again you know your federal agencies are are um already strapped as is so you know i would not be surprised if we saw legislation within this year to increase that sort of behavior and create an infrastructure to do it with a with a snap of a finger or push of a button but who knows yeah huh that's interesting i i i have a hard time believing some people out there aren't already on that list and getting looked at whatever they buy anyway but yeah it's it's a very interesting thing this this notion of government watch lists and what that actually means well you know there's no one big list with everybody's name on it who's kind of been sort of enemy of the state for lack of a better term there's a there's a bunch of different things that kind of go into it so and it's it varies by agency too so can you talk about that at all or well i mean i you know it's really not my field of expertise and mostly domestic stuff but um i can say that say you're trying to buy a plane ticket and with you know cash money to a certain place well you know if it's a place like north korea you know somebody's obviously going to be watching that um if you're trying to especially if you're trying to transfer money you know the electronic bank transfer system is is a huge part of that so you know one person taking a weekend trip to dubai nobody cares about but if you're trying to you know make contact with like a north korean regime or something like that in order to set up a tourist visa to their country yeah you're going to get looked at and it's going to be probably by agencies we've never even heard of so i'm glad they're out there though man because frankly like you know you can give the government grow up all you want but they're protecting our ass when it comes down to it you know yeah it's such a it's such a difficult topic that we ourselves have had to kind of look at is that there's a lot of anti-government sentiment out there which is perfectly legit like i get it and then there's also the people that you know blindly trust a lot of these agencies and it's we try to walk that line between the two saying look there's good stuff out there and there's bad stuff out there we're gonna shine light on the bad stuff and make sure it doesn't happen and you know the good stuff that's happening out there we're gonna continue to try to do that's you know what we do um but i can tell you you know the the bad stuff sometimes that weighs the good stuff in a lot of cases so sometimes it's really hard to put stuff to do some good stuff too i think right yeah and well you know that that goes down a whole rabbit hole in and of itself too i mean it's um from you know military side and civilian side and you know three letter agencies it's uh a lot of good stuff happens and a lot of bad stuff happens um hopefully at the end of the day the good stuff can outweigh the bad stuff but you know as you can even see that's kind of a flawed line of thinking right so the fact that bad stuff happens at all is is not good but you know it's it's sort of the way it is and there's not a whole lot we can do to change it but when i think that i think you're right about that is it's just the way it is and it's probably not going to change yeah if nothing else it's not going to change within a time frame that would be acceptable so you know stuff like when snowden leaked what he did um you know the world and really most citizens were kind of you know outraged that this was going on this entire time so you know what he did did force to do a lot of a lot of good stuff unfortunately our adversaries look at what he did and say oh this is handy for us to know now so let's go look at it and figure out how we can exploit it you know at this at the end of the day so there's there's two sides to every coin and there's uh two edges to every sword really i'm really surprised trump didn't uh pardon snowden i would you know it would have made sense to get support but at the end of the day it kind of makes sense considering the people that are whispering in his ear from a national security perspective you know at the very top end of the food chain um it's it kind of makes sense that those people don't like what he did and the money that was cost and the sort of black eye that the nsa and the intelligence community got from that it sort of makes sense that he didn't because you know why would he would have just gotten support from people he who already supported him so right but yeah it would have been it would have been nice to see especially considering you know courts have said that he didn't really do anything wrong so that doesn't matter he cost us money yeah exactly exactly so at the end of the day it's all politics and you know we have to kind of expect politicians to do political things so amen to that man it's it's it's what it is so jake struck says i had over 15 000 followers during the virginia rally i gave out all sorts of information about the protest and they banned him from instagram and deleted his facebook he still can't make a facebook yeah that makes sense i mean virginia is a very uh virginia is a very interesting place especially when it comes to anything that goes against the status quo i mean you know at this point in time i think america is figuring out that you know somebody saying hey i politely disagree with you well that's being labeled as extremism by a lot of people out there yeah and you know something is you know i politely disagree with you that's you know that's been extremist behavior for virginia for a while unfortunately well let's jump into this because this is really the core meat and potatoes of what we're talking about here we'll get guys questions uh for sure but i want to take the opportunity right now sure so you know you bring up their mislead miss labeling people um extreme right terrorists we saw the speech with sj and i'm just going to refer to sleepy as sj i don't want to like so yeah we saw you know sj put out um a few very divisive speeches and in one of them he was saying uh all of this stuff about that you know this is about race and this is about if you know these white people wouldn't have been treated and then he's was saying all this stuff about um these people are domestic terrorists and that's not a like a term you can throw around very lightly so worried me when i heard that yeah very very serious stuff so it's it's fascinating from an intel perspective because these are tactics that people like us and you know people in government and in analytical agencies have been using for a very long time so this is where that sort of you know kernel of truth comes out when somebody like alex jones comes out and says it's all the psyop right well there's a little bit of truth to that these are certain tactics you know we all know how gaslighting works you know you do things to a person you make them question their own sanity by saying you know by either um [Music] convincing them that what they're doing they're not doing or by conv or by convincing them that they are doing behavior that you yourself are guilty of so it's it's a very interesting uh very interesting tactic that not just um not just you know politicians on the left are using but politicians on the right are using as well but right now we're kind of really seeing it come from the left unfortunately it's really missing its target a lot of times because you know we're starting to see a lot of extremist groups on the left on the political left of the spectrum we're starting to see them of course fight extremism on the right but the problem is is that when you go so far to the edge of the political spectrum you have a hard time identifying who's really the enemy so when when agencies on the left or when entities on the left try to target conservative or extreme right behavior they end up just hitting middle america they hit centers or people who you know like we said earlier in our key base server you know you end up hitting gary neck from next door instead of the actual like white supremacist or racist down the street like it's very interesting the way that it ends up shaking out because the power of information is is truly something yeah and you know speaking about the far right like neo-nazis skinheads or whatever like yeah you know i grew up in new york man when i was like a kid a kid you would like see that type of like punk skinhead thing around i don't see that stuff anymore man i mean look i get it out there like but i don't know how like to what degree it really is out there like maybe some people would like you to think yeah that's a that's a good point and we have done a considerable amount of own like internal research trying to figure out that exact thing because when you call somebody you know a fascist or a nazi or or white supremacist or whatever there's really no coming back from that so the the trick is is that really behavior that's happening or is it not and one of the things we found out is that you know this kind of an obvious statement is look white supremacy and racism and the extreme the the extremists on the right they've been around for kind of a long time yeah a long time and they've gotten really really good at hiding their behavior or if not just hiding it changing it in such a way that it becomes more palatable that's why you legitimately see at a lot of you know conservative rallies actual like white supremacists pretending to be people who favor liberty or something like that that's of course not not everybody it's not even the majority it's not even it's just a tiny little bit but it is interesting how that happens whereas extremists on the left you're going to know who they are because they tell you yeah um so conservative and or you know extremists on the far far right they're not going to tell you they're an extremist until you you know you develop some kind of rapport because they have been sort of hunted by you know federal law enforcement agencies for a long time you know ask any politician ask anybody on the national security council they're going to tell you that the number one threat to america is homegrown conservative or alt-right extremism they're not going to tell you what something like 9 11 happening again so that's really the biggest threat that we actually are facing is domestic homegrown whether it's on the left or the right but domestic homegrown stuff i i think it's kind of hard to say what our biggest threat is because the united states historically is pretty bad at this we're very we're pretty bad at seeing a major threat out there and acting on it early enough to know that it actually was a major threat like the indicators that were out there for 911 were around for years before i mean the building was bombed in 93 so we can go you know using that as an example but it's hard to say if that is the biggest one but absolutely we were 100 convinced that uh homegrown extremism from any political spectrum is definitely a major threat in today's society so when we uh see the news coverage of what happened out there in um you know in virginia unfortunately we see them trying to paint everyone there as a neo-nazi right we see one guy with like a really crude racist shirt on and you know whatever they they try to paint everyone with the same brush right do you think that there were antipas in there do you think that it was only kind of who do you think that we can if any particular one group that could kind of get the blame for that so it's kind of that's kind of an interesting thought because one thing that that really a lot of people on both sides have been looking out for is the concept of a false flag attack which is something that is not really well known um well it really wasn't well known like five years ago it's now sort of a mainstream thing you've got somebody who said who like you said say there's some guy wearing a really racist shirt at a conservative rally and they say ah the conservatives will say ah that guy was a false flag he was really like antifa or something the other way around is the same you'll see somebody wearing an antifa shirt and breaking a window in portland and the antifa will say no no that guy was a false flag attack and that's when we get into we start getting into a rut of well we don't actually know we can't actually figure this out unless we grab that guy find out who he is and investigate further which nobody's gonna do um we can't possibly know was this guy really who he says he is or was he not so it's very interesting to see because after every single event especially things like the capital or um the storming of the uh capital in michigan or any other capital situation or even anti for rioting in you know portland or in new york up there where you're at um it's it's a uh it's a hard thing to figure out what is actually happening because you've got videos and evidence from both sides saturating the market and then you add in the false info on top of that and it's just a a great big you know recipe for misinformation out there so i would i would not doubt that there are people in every major event that happens there are going to be people that show up that say they are something and they are something else entirely like that we've seen from as far as the capital is concerned because that's everybody what everybody's talking about now we have a pretty good amount of evidence that does suggest that there were extremists on the left i think mostly antifa who did masquerade or at least they plan to masquerade as conservatives with the intention of doing harm so you know whether or not that gets investigated who knows but we do have a little bit of evidence there so and it does make sense from a you know sort of tactical perspective yeah it does uh poq wants to know have you seen the 2a common sense legislation that's coming through um i heard a little bit about this but not not much i haven't i have seen that there have been a lot of gun control ask legislation come out over the past couple weeks but i haven't seen anything specific i wouldn't have really delved into that step on that because that would be uh that wouldn't be necessarily the smartest thing to do right now you know yeah it's we're starting to see a lot of people rather than trying to convince people of their ideology just kind of force it down their throat so you know some people just um the hypocrisy with a lot of politicians and political leadership and things like that is kind of gets in the way of what they're actually trying to do they would be best served to not gloat about things you know if they were trying to get something done so yeah it i have a whole lot of reservations about you know the next four years or so but yeah yeah um so trying to catch up with these questions here we're getting a lot of them so they yeah uh let's see and if you see one jay that stands out to you just let me know i'm trying to get to everybody but there's a lot of chatter back and forth too so if i missed something uh feel free guys just to sound off again yeah i'm still watching um yeah so i guess really the the kind of the consensus here from what i'm seeing in the chat is that um you know people are really confused people don't really know what to make of what's going on here it's frightening um it should be frightening and i think a lot of people just really want answers as to hey is it gonna be okay so yeah we can't answer that but in your educated opinion i mean what do we see coming down the pike here so that's something that we have we've kind of been tossing around in the shop here trying to figure out how do we convey this because one of the things that we have from the very second we had an instagram account until today we've run into the issue of how do we accurately convey a threat or an assessment or something without either seeming like you're under selling it or you're overselling it so what we think is it you know who's going to happen is we're going to go through some tough times i think that's kind of obvious um as far as specific events that are going to happen i would you know we've had hours and hours of podcasts talking about you know we're we're going to see gun control be a huge thing we're going to see um a lot of federal state and local law enforcement stuff change um from what it is to something else either it be through social action um or through governmental action um we're gonna see a lot of different stuff it's kind of hard to sort of sort of define but you know we can say you know one of the things we get asked a lot is you know i have no idea what's going on i i don't understand any of this so you're kind of an expert tell me when to panic and we absolutely are saying it is not time to panic at all it's time to be concerned i think 2020 and so far this year has shown us that yeah it's time to be concerned about certain things um but considering of how many people out there in america are willing to do the right thing or at least be educated enough to do the right thing you know well we're not uh we're not all uh you know the time is not right you know where the end is not we're not uh we're not so pessimistic is all that but um yeah we do think that a lot of things are going to happen in 2021 and they're probably going to upset a lot of different people yeah so i'm with you 100 on that i definitely don't think it's time to panic um but it is time to raise an eyebrow so yeah absolutely yep okay we got uh shades or shade is actual on here again he says what policies do you think are going to be implemented in the next year and will all states follow those policies i would say there are most certainly going to be a lot of things passed i would say probably go to the presidential uh you know the platforms of hey this is what we're going to pass the first hundred day plan i would say that's probably going to be pretty close um i would say that stuff like that if not that exact stuff like you know mass gun control mass uh agencies kind of going off the wire and doing their own sort of thing that's going to be a thing you know throughout the year not just the first hundred days um i would however say that some of that stuff is probably just by the nature of being politics is not going to happen because it's either too costly or too too difficult to do or some political pork was traded another way so i would say that generally speaking pretty much everything that was campaigned on is probably going to happen within this year if it's not companies are going to influence things and make it so anyway so that's probably what's going to happen yeah yeah i think you're gonna you're gonna see a lot of ars kind of fall into lakes um yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah i think that the the gun control thing is probably gonna be very i think 2020 especially the end of 2020 showed us that when it comes to things like gun control really the people that were out there screaming the loudest who are saying that this is the worst possible thing that's going to happen even they were kind of underselling it um when it comes to that sort of thing um because as we know the whole ar pistol thing they uh you know found out that hey we're not just going after braces but the whole pistol itself so it's like well that's not good um yeah you had it was funny around here you know it's such a liberal place um you had people trying to buy guns and just come to realize like they've either been arrested or like they have they're not i'm not eligible what the hell are you talking about like they had no concept of how hard it really is to get one yeah it's it's not easy to do and depending on where you live it's it's you know damn near impossible sometimes so yeah exactly and the uh the old trick of uh the old argument of going down to home depot and making one yourself that's that's not exactly a realistic thing either so yeah unless you have like two three four years of experience doing it good luck man and an entire machine shop yeah um jamie says can you talk a little bit more about key base and uh so so key base is kind of where we ended up um key base is a it is a decentralized platform as far as we know there aren't any servers out there it's basically like discord but it's a little bit less user friendly but once you get on it and you start using it for different things it's uh it's something it's one of those platforms that's virtually impossible to get rid of um it's very hard to get rid of it we had a discord server where we had i think 1400 or so people in it and discord just decided hey we we don't want you around anymore so they deleted everything but they didn't just delete us everybody who had a discord account they also deleted their account for um terrorism i think it was um so yeah that can't happen with key base once you set it up you get in you're good to go um but yeah even key base isn't perfect so we have a very intense communications plan and all different kinds of platforms you can spring to but i would i would assume that based on the deep platforming we're seeing right now there are going to be some very good and interesting things come out of the tech world over the next say month or so yeah and i thought it was interesting that um you know dt was talking about you know donald was talking about um possibly doing his own thing or maybe even having somebody acquire um what is it facebook or whatever like no twitter i mean that yeah that'd be kind of interesting um i i don't know how that would work out for him but you know one of the things that kind of kept people like us and a lot of people off of places like parlor before they got shut down the sort of thing that kind of made people not go on it was how it seemed to be like a basically conservative sounding meaning if you were not conservative you weren't really welcome there well i think that as we've seen when parlor got i don't know tens of millions of accounts created that sort of even the playing field and now you have a it's not so much a sounding room anymore well before it was deleted but it's more of a more of a normal type play so i think that's what's going to happen is we're going to see a lot of platforms get created for the sole purpose of being a political sound agreement for whatever ideology but we're also going to start seeing people have to go somewhere social media is part of people's lives and if you you know get rid of half of everybody on twitter well those people that's what 80 million people or something like that they're gonna have to go somewhere so no doubt and i think you're absolutely right about that where it's going to be interesting to see what starts to shake out and i think that these companies are going to start to see a lot of you know blowback so to speak about what they're doing and how hard they're censoring and if you really think about it you know um i don't want to say guys like you and me because that makes us like sound like whatever but guys like 40 of the united states are like like-minded you know what i'm saying so yeah exactly yeah yeah it's it's um it's definitely going to be interesting to see what kind of comes out of the the tech world on this one that's for sure because we're starting to see a lot of peer-to-peer decentralized blockchain based stuff it's it's very interesting um people starting to be motivated enough to create things that can't ever be shut down even if the internet disappears they'll still be active so it's very fascinating to follow that stuff yeah that's some fascinating stuff right there as far as all that goes um so what else do you see i mean you guys number one i wanted to say for any of you out there who haven't already gone and checked out the s2 underground podcast on youtube you're missing out um if you like this type of content if you like what we put out at gutter fighting secrets with the close protection tactics and all that you're going to geek out on what these guys are putting out because it's real official like tradecraft amazing stuff um number two if you don't follow s2 go ahead and follow them um here on insta s what is the su underground backup uh yeah s2 underground i think three or four or something like that if you just search for s2 underground you'll find us perfect um and so again on key gates are on key base as well yep on key base as well just search for s2 underground on key base and that'll be where we're at cool so those are the platforms um i'm sure there'll be more in the mix we're looking you know here at getting more in the mix as well what do you think is going to happen with polar you think i i think parlor's probably gonna struggle for a while but i think they or their founders will create something else if not called parlor it's gonna be called something else but they'll eventually find a way to to get back online i don't know if that data is going to be there still so i would i would assume that anybody who had a parlor account like we had one i would assume that data is probably gone or going to be gone by the time they get a replacement but i would assume they're probably not uh they're not totally gone they'll be back i'm sure somebody would be well man i want to uh wrap it up right now so let you get you know get to your family and everything but thank you so much for coming on i know we froze up for a second there on instagram are you still with me yeah absolutely okay cool making sure they didn't boot us all right so yeah man it's um dude it's been a distinct pleasure to uh to have you on jay and i really appreciate you coming on yeah i appreciate it man likewise it's been fun so we'll have to do this again sometime absolutely i'll be looking forward to it man guys yeah no absolutely dude so i want to encourage all of you again if you don't follow me go ahead click that follow button um i've got obviously um gutterfundingsecrets.com you can always follow me on that they can't kick me off that not yet um follow s2 on instagram key base youtube and once you get there he'll give you more platforms as they come along so for all of you guys uh sades pog freaking all you guys out there who were commenting and asking questions thank you so much for coming on and i'm gonna shut up and stop rambling now and just say good night guys and please remember that you were your first and last line of defense jay thanks again appreciate it man [Music] you

Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the intel update for September 28th through October 4th, 2025. As one might expect, the madness has continued this week, so let's get right to it. In northern Europe, the drone reports of last week have more or less continued as before with no real change. Most of these are really hard to separate from people mistakenly thinking that aircraft landing in an airport are drones, so it's hard to separate these reports out, but it's just something to keep in mind as airports continue to shut down their airspace because of drone reports. Don't know if it's any more than usual drone reports and uh visual sightings of drones at airports are something that has certainly grounded a lot of flights. It's kind of a daily occurrence at this point, but considering the tensions in Europe remain fairly high, it's something to keep an eye on. In the UK, the digital ID woes have continued, which we'll cover a little bit more in depth later on. And in the Middle East, the tensions are remaining fairly high, as you might expect, but peace is allegedly around the corner. I know no one really believes it until it happens, which is fair enough. The White House has gone through a lot of effort this week to make it sound like uh the that Hamas and Israel have agreed on a peace deal. Of course, immediately as soon as this peace deal and the acceptance of the peace deal was announced, Israel bombed Gaza again, so this is uh the way things go in the region, so yeah, we'll just have to see. Uh very, very little optimism on that front, but we'll see. Same story throughout the region at large, uh to be honest. In Syria, there have been quite a few incidents over the past few weeks that I haven't mentioned, but I did want to bring eyes to it because it's uh the situation in Syria is deteriorating. Uh their leader can put on a suit and shake the hand of the president of the United States, but it doesn't stop the fact that gangs of militia are going around slaughtering uh pretty much anyone they can get their hands on, but especially Christians who are being persecuted in Syria like to an unbelievable degree. So, this will get zero press in the western media, so I didn't want to mention it so that we can uh at least pray for the plight of Christians uh all around the world, but especially those uh in Syria. So, a little bit closer to home, the war in the Caribbean continues as before with uh strikes on suspected narco vessels or whatever you want to call them occurring down in the Caribbean Sea. The media has been yapping as usual about the United States uh trying to get to war with Venezuela and and put uh boots on ground. Nothing solid on that front. I'm full I fully expect it to happen, but until the go order is issued to launch an invasion of uh Venezuela, it's all just rumor and it's all going to be just theory, so I fully expect to wake up one morning and and find out that there's, you know, a few thousand Marines on the ground in Venezuela, so that's how the American people are going to find out about it is my guess. So, that's just a personal planning factor on my end. And staying in the theme of defense here at home, there have been a lot of shakeups at the Pentagon lately, a lot of high-profile firings. There was, of course, the uh I guess I should call it the compliance and uh loyalty meeting. There has been mixed feedback on that whole situation over the past few days. There's pros and cons, there's positives and negatives, but and most of this rhetoric is uh in the realm of people disagreeing with the Secretary of War's uh leadership style. That's fine, fair enough, but on a strategic scale, from a grand strategy scale, we're looking at a lot of shooting wars on the horizon over the next couple of decades, at least. Russia-Ukraine is probably not going to be the end of conflict in Europe. China and Taiwan is, of course, going to be a very kinetic situation when it pops off. And of course, we've got the situation down in Venezuela, which I don't know if I would call that a a list a large-scale combat operation. I don't know if I would call it that. That's more of a standard American uh regime toppling in South America, but either way, the Pentagon's got a lot of problems at the higher levels. There's a lot, and I mean a lot of insubordination. I know that a more non-military uh community might not be familiar with the problems with that sort of thing, but but let me just say that if you think that there are some radical politicians in Congress, if you think you see a a congressman or a congresswoman say something really, really inflammatory or really illegal or something like that, that does not hold a candle to the average flag officer. Uh so, they are very strange. Uh they've got very weird habits most of the time, and it's uh it's something that is kind of a little bit of military culture that has gotten uh quite serious over the past few years, so I think that's probably what this meeting was all about. Everybody was expecting for it to be a mass firing situation, but it wasn't. My guess it was the uh yeah, proverbial shot across the bow for the flag officer corps to get their act together. Making generals PT and pass height-weight is uh that wasn't what it was all about in the War Department. There is uh only one way to actually legally discriminate against people, and that is with uh fitness standards, so turns out a lot of the people that are dirtbags in the military also are not very fit, so that's an easy way to get them out. So, I think that's probably what that was all about. But anyway, I don't expect any general or admiral to actually do the PT test. I think they're just going to disobey the order like they've been doing for, well, since Trump took office, so anyway, big concerns at the high-level strategery for the United States, and clearly there are a lot of changes inbound for the Department of War. And speaking of war, let's move over to strategic movement. I need to update this slide, so sorry, this is the positions are a little out of date, but the general mood is that the bombings will continue until morale improves. That seems to be the general attitude towards the situation in Venezuela. But anyway, that war down south is going to continue on for quite a while is my guess, but personally, I'm more concerned about the kinetic events here at home. And this week has been very busy. We have had multiple shootings around the country, and we have had multiple incidents involving churches, which have been very concerning. The unrest in Portland and the unrest in Chicago continues as before. It's really the same level of low level of antifa counter-ice sort of thing, but for the most part, this is a very large problem, so it's going to take many, many years to even put a dent in, right? So, the situation being the same as before is not an indication of the situation not being serious anymore. It's not like it's, you know, slipping into a state of lull. No, it's pretty kinetic around the country. It's just that these issues are not going to be solved in a weekend, right? So, let's go ahead and get down into the regions for this week, and let's talk about the Southport shooting in North Carolina. There were two high-profile shootings this week that I wanted to mention, both of which are very suspicious or have some sort of mental illness flavor to them. You can make that argument with every mass shooting, but these in particular were rather beyond the pale for what I would consider to be a quote-unquote normal mass shooting, right? The typical standard usual suspect kind of thing. So, the individual who conducted the shooting in Southport, North Carolina was Nigel Edge. That's actually a name he gave himself, so he legally changed his name a couple of years ago, I think back in 2023 or 2024. Before that, his real name was Sean De Beavoir. I heard about this shooting and immediately started digging into it because it was very interesting because this individual started shooting at a restaurant or {slash} fishing pier that was hosting live music from the water, so he was in a a small boat in the Intracoastal Waterway there, and and he started shooting up the fishing pier or the live music that was going on at the restaurant next door from the water, so that was very interesting. You don't normally see something like that, a a sort of sail-by shooting or a float-by shooting. I'm not entirely certain, but multiple casualties resulted from this, so I went down to the very bottom of the of the rabbit hole on this one because uh this guy is kind of a local legend. He's very well known to police for being very strange and launching many, many questionable lawsuits uh uh against them, which kind of piqued my interest for reasons. And because this guy was a combat veteran who served in Iraq during the height of the war, I I wanted to do my due diligence to make sure that, you know, we're we're talking about this guy in the most um correct way possible, right? So, just cutting to the chase for those of you who don't want to go all the way down to the bottom of the rabbit hole, the shooter uh Edge or De Beavoir was discharged from the Marine Corps after sustaining combat wounds in Iraq a few years ago during, you know, the height of hostilities. And one of those combat wounds was he actually got shot in the head with small arms and survived the encounter, but I'm sorry to say uh it it it may have had some follow-on effects, and uh it unfortunately started a lot of bad stuff in this guy's life, which uh unfortunately culminating in him choosing to become a mass murderer. So, that's what I think happened here. I think that there was very clearly something wrong, something not going on, and unfortunately, rather than being able to to get some help, he chose to become a mass murderer. I mean, it's bad enough when somebody gets groomed to be a mass shooter or has some kind of um you know, mental problem just just normally, but it's even worse when that uh situation seems to stem from uh combat injuries, you know? Uh this guy served his country and, you know, got shot in the head for it, and, you know, uh from that moment on was was never quite the same. So, tragic story all around. I think everybody, the victims, the families of all involved, and definitely need prayers. But violence is definitely increasing around the country, and we've definitely got to keep that in mind. Similar story uh up in Michigan. So, moving over to the Midwest, we of course have the uh horrific church shooting at the LDS church in Grand Blanc. This one is somehow more of a mystery, and I don't think we're going to get more information on this because again, the shooter is uh deceased, right? So, they can't tell their side of the story anymore. We have to go based off of uh what evidence they left behind, and this one is an equally strange story. Either way, he conducted a vehicle ramming attack to try to breach or run his vehicle into the building. It didn't quite make it. You can kind of see from the from the images that the vehicle was uh was not able to penetrate the building completely, but either way, once the vehicle came to a stop kind of embedded in the building there, he exited the vehicle and switched to the small arms phase of the attack again. Complex attack, switching weapon systems during the attack. Usually, complex attacks indicate some kind of deliberation or planning or prior coordination or something like that. It's not just a spur of the moment thing, somebody pulling out a pistol and starting shooting cuz they're angry or they snap or something like that. No, this was a very planned thing, so vehicle ramming attack, switch to small arms, and then finally, again, this guy had a tertiary means of attack, at least according to authorities, in that he had IEDs rigged inside his vehicle. No one has said whether or not those were just not used during the attack or if he he planned to use them but didn't or if they were rigged to explode after the attack. Again, this is a very common thing you see, especially throughout places like the Middle East, but the doctrine is nearly universal at this point. Vehicle ramming attack, driver gets out, conducts a shooting, and they've rigged their explosive their their uh their vehicle to explode after they are expired, right? So, they're not planning to survive the shooting, but they want to get as many people as humanly possible, and to do that, they oftentimes will rig their vehicles to explode or rig their remains to explode. So, again, this is very serious stuff. I wish we did not have to uh talk about this sort of thing or even know about these uh sort of things, but it's kind of the way that it is, so and just as a brief side note, this is something I'm working on uh trying to brainstorm a little bit more how I can help a lot of uh church security teams in particular because it's a very unique subset of uh executive security, I think. In the case of this Michigan situation, I don't think this was a random attack. I have I have done a lot of investigation to try to figure out why this guy did this attack, and there are the rumors are flying, but this was definitely a personal grievance attack. This was not just him seeing the closest building that was a church and attacking it, right? This was a uh a more planned sort of thing for personal reasons. Now, what those personal reasons are, again, the rumors haven't really been very indicative of much, but it's a very complicated situation. I'll just say that. And either way, uh he ended up killing people, so for those who want to dig into it, you can, but I just know that when it comes to risk management, risk mitigation, and things like that, this is not uh like the case in the UK we'll talk about in a minute. This is definitely more of a targeted thing. Uh the North Carolina was probably quite random. Uh that was more of a random thing. Uh it was planned. He did he did plan the shooting, but I don't think he would I don't know if he was targeting that the that actually fishing pier in a deliberate state of mind, I'll just say it like that. Whereas, this guy, I think he did. I think he targeted this church for a reason, and I think that reason was personal, as is very common uh amongst uh complex attacks, but if this guy went to the effort to conduct a vehicle ramming attack, conduct a mass shooting, and then plan for IEDs to be involved in some form or fashion, that is a lot of deliberation, and to be honest, there's not a whole lot of preparation you can make uh without turning your church into an utter fortress, you know, there's not a whole lot you can do to uh isolate and prevent these sorts of things because this guy didn't really have any indicators uh leading up to this that he one might be capable of this, but also that he would do something like this. So, yeah, two very tragic shootings around the United States this this this time around. And before we move over to the United Kingdom, I'll uh briefly mention the situation down in Florida that I'm still gathering information on regarding the church bomb threat attack. So, so down in Florida, there was a very serious incident involving the Saint Andrew Greek Orthodox Church in Miami. Now, you can read the excruciating details in my wire report. Sorry if that was a bit of a non-standard report, but I felt this was a very very important thing uh for people to be aware of uh when it comes to bomb threats. So, the short version of the story is strange man shows up to the liturgy on Sunday morning. He had a backpack with him, which is um a little odd uh to be carrying in church. He was also acting very strangely, which prompted a deacon to make contact with the man to see if he's doing okay, if there's, you know, something wrong or something like that, you know, the typical thing you'd expect to see, right? Uh general concern for the man's well-being. So, when the deacon made contact with the man, the the guy handed the backpack to the deacon and told him it was a bomb, told him it was an explosive device, and the backpack was making a sound reminiscent of some sort of ticking or countdown or something like that. So, the situation uh kind of went downhill from there. I certainly don't want to speculate on this, you know, uh obviously being involved with a church, right? It's uh something that you want to treat with very great respect, right? But, the facts of the case are as follows. The deacon uh took the backpack and and put it off to the side of the nave or the narthex, wherever they were in the church. I I don't have the details on that or I've seen some reports that say it was a side room, but I don't know if that church's construction has I would I don't I don't know where where there would be a side room in that part of the church. Either way, it doesn't matter. Uh he put the backpack off to the side, and my speculating here a little bit, tried to figure out what to do. The dude continues to act very strangely, and suddenly, at some point during the liturgy, uh his phone, which no one knew at the time, but there was a very loud piercing alarm with with what sounded like a countdown. Church was still not evacuated. No evacuation, no none of that. No, I don't know if the priest was notified or not. I don't know what the status of of that was. Eventually, the man jumped up and uh ran over to the backpack, the bomb that he said was a bomb, and uh tinkered around with it. Some reports say that he got his phone out of the bag. Some reports say he put his phone in the bag. I don't know. There's been very little interest in investigating this, so I just don't know at this point. Either way, dude continues to act strangely, very giving off every single terrorist vibe you could possibly give out, right? And at the at the conclusion of services, he gets up and shouts at the top of his lungs, "Allahu Akbar!" before leaving the church. So, obviously, the uh parishioners inside the church are freaking out quite a bit. They don't really they probably don't really know what to do, but either way, somehow or another, either he filled out a prayer card or some kind of information request or something, they had his name and phone number somehow. So, the cops were able to find out where he lived and picked him up the next day. So, suffice it to say, uh things could have been handled a little bit better uh with this, and I'm sure that a lot of learning occurred at this particular church that will uh be useful uh should this sort of thing happen again. The suspect was, of course, rolled up, and he is uh a Cuban national, so he's not American. So, there's that. Uh he has been arrested on a shockingly low bond. So, this guy uh harasses a church, scares the daylights out of everybody, and threatens to bomb the place, and yet we can't get a terrorism charge for this on the federal level. So, so what does this tell the next guy? What does this tell the next mentally ill uh person who wants to go into a church and and try to cause a lot of problems and scare people and cause harm, right? Well, this tells them that they can do it, and they'll just get a slap on the wrist. I seem to recall a very big push on social media from the White House and from lots of different officials regarding the targeting of Christians in this country, and I'm very curious as to why this gentleman has not had the book or rather the entire bookshelf thrown at him for pulling this little stunt. So, something to keep in mind, uh especially as attacks on religious institutions all around the world are increasing at an at an unfathomable rate. I obviously don't want to get into church doctrine on this sort of thing, but I would very strongly very strongly encourage uh if you don't already have a procedure in place, and if your if your church, because let me tell you something, guys, I get these messages from you. I hear you. I get these messages from people all the time that say, "Look, my church is very vulnerable, and the church is not interested uh even paying attention to these security risks. We've had people who are now scared to come to liturgy. They're now scared to come to mass. They're now scared to come to services because they're afraid because the church doesn't want to have a you know, make a scene or something with regards to security. So, these are issues that I would very strongly encourage everyone to take to their own religious leaders, their own priests, their own pastors, and, you know, talk about it, right? I don't think anybody wants their church to become the green zone, but still, look, it's a very serious time, you know, I I and I and I think that that, and I'm speculating quite a bit here, but I think that that was probably what this church did down in Florida is they they probably thought that it was a mental case and that they just the guy needed some help, which very clearly he did, but at the same time, uh when you cross that line into the potential mass murder of men, women, and children inside a place of worship, now, homie don't play that. So, churches are going to have to figure it out. Churches are going to have to step up, and uh it's going to have to be people having conversations with their priests to figure out what best security practices they can do, what to do. Is there a plan? Is there anything? Has anyone ever thought about this? Because that's generally the first step. It's not even like, how can we increase security? It's it's really the first step is we have to acknowledge that there is a security concern here, you know, with a lot of the with a lot of churches these days because a lot of the time, the churches themselves don't want to acknowledge that people are getting hurt, and that's a problem. So, definitely have the conversation if you're if you're able, and uh if the conversation needs to be had, it's up to you. And do the best you can. Keep your head on a swivel. And those of us uh who who have the skills to do so and the means to do so, we'll we'll do what we can to uh help protect the most vulnerable parts of society. So, so it's not all bad, but we definitely still have a lot to learn and a lot of wake-up calls to make. Very similar situation uh across the pond in the United Kingdom. So, jumping over, unfortunately, we're jump we're we're jumping from one attack to the next this week, I'm sorry to say, but everyone, of course, has heard of the terror attack in Manchester at the synagogue there. The attacker uh was uncharacteristically identified uh rather quickly. I I assume probably due to the context of the case. This guy was identified pretty much immediately, uh and his name was released as Jihad al-Shammi, which is a rather unfortunate name. Um so, same story as before, complex attack starting with vehicle ramming to try to get through the gate because uh the synagogue had a very a pretty pretty substantial gate uh fence up out front. Uh so, he used his vehicle to ram through that, and uh then transitioned to stabbing. I don't know if he was able to actually gain entry to the facility or not. It looks like he wasn't. So, I don't know where his victims came from. Maybe people who were inside the compound. I don't I don't actually know. I I haven't been able to verify that. But, either way, rammed through the gate, rammed through the fence, transitioned to stabbing, and then the final phase of his attack was of course the attempted uh detonation of his suicide belt. The authorities are stating that it was not a viable device. But, here's the thing. We they haven't really explicitly and clearly stated that it was attempted to be, right? Either way, the authorities have said that it was {quote} {unquote} a not viable device. So, that's something to That's a detail to get ironed out later on. Another detail, which is extremely unfortunate, is that there were multiple casualties from the police response. There were friendly fire casualties. One was killed, one was wounded with uh non-life-threatening uh wounds due to obviously the you know, police trying to shoot this this guy, and uh the bullet going either missing or going through him uh through the door into the facility and uh hitting the people who were trying to barricade the door. So, So, all in all, this this attack does highlight that you can do everything right. You can do everything by the book. You can do everything perfectly, and casualties still be the result. It's gritty. It's raw. It's rough. But, that's the truth. And unfortunately, uh this kind of thing is definitely uh in season these days. This attack was conducted on Yom Kippur, which is a major holiday. Uh however, today is October 4th. What do we have coming up on October 7th, right? So, another major milestone anniversary that is very high risk. So, tensions are going to be high. Counterterrorism risk is going to be high. I saw the UK is trying to Either they've done it already, or they're thinking about raising their their terrorism level for the time being. And uh once again, whenever there's a serious talk of peace in the Middle East, things happen. So, definitely keep heads on a swivel. Definitely keep moving forward and uh trying to do the best you can and staying vigilant with this. So, that's it for the terrorist attacks today. Let's talk about the uh UK digital ID stuff. So, the British government responded to the signature uh petition. It got almost 2.8 million signatures, and the British government's response has basically been no, which I don't think anybody was expecting the answer to be anything other than this. I you know, uh the response was definitely going to be a no. Uh we're going to do what we want anyway, which is more or less what the British government stated. It's just that the wording of it has gotten people a little bit upset. So, yeah, I just wanted to highlight cuz I mentioned this a few days ago in the wire that there was a petition going on to stop this digital ID thing. And uh Prime Minister Starmer is just kind of saying no. Just uh doing whatever he wants. And uh it's very interesting uh leadership style. Uh even within his own party, he's cracking down. So, very interesting uh choice of leadership style. It's not entirely uh unfamiliar throughout Europe's history. But, again, don't think anybody was expecting anything different. But, uh I try to cover these sorts of things just because I I know that a lot of uh our uh friends across the pond kind of have uh have their hands tied with even talking about a lot of this stuff nowadays. It's pretty dangerous to have an opinion in the UK these days. So, I try to kind of highlight these things when I can. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's roll up with the Ghost and Reports. It was actually a really good week. So, propagation for me was rather poor. Radio conditions were rather poor. But, I got a lot of messages still. So, that's very good to see. So, people are definitely using the resource. Using it to exchange information, do some testing, all kinds of stuff. So, it's pretty good to see. And these days, having alternative communications methods and uh being more resilient in the comms uh arena is is just a piece of the puzzle, right? It's not an end-all be-all, right? It's not the primary focus a lot of the time even. It's uh it's just something that we can add to our uh toolbox as we're keeping our heads on a swivel. Because, let me tell you something. In case you haven't noticed, it's getting pretty spicy out there. It's getting pretty dangerous in a lot of areas. So, anyway, thank you guys for all of your support. Thank you guys for for sticking with me. Thank you guys for reading through my little rather long report sometimes. And uh I'll try to be a little bit more concise and to the point next week. But, thank you guys again for all of your support. I really couldn't do it without you. And uh we'll see you next week. So, thank you guys again, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

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

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for March 9th through the 15th 2025 before we get into it I wanted to issue the the brief disclaimer that today is going to be a little bit more informal a lot more opinion-based a lot more dis digression and discussion on some of these things because unfortunately uh we are squarely in the time period where it's very very challenging for me to talk about anything in a purely neutral fact-based way uh when it comes to anything that the White House or the Trump Administration might do that is not entirely a good thing everyone is human everyone makes mistakes and I I personally really do genuinely wish uh president Trump and the Trump Administration well however at some point we're going to have to talk about some things that aren't so great and unfortunately a lot of people just can't handle that uh they just can't do it I I think that in terms of viewership the overwhelming majority of people who uh who listen to my work are conservatives uh which is fine this is you know I I guess I'm even though I consider myself to be politically homeless I guess I'm generally uh more conservative uh for sure but as much as we might want to remove politics from things like this as the old adage goes you may not care about politics but politics certainly cares about you and right now especially in the current news cycle almost all of the issues that we're going to have to talk about are going to be political in some way and right now I get the impression that I'm expected to bite my my tongue and just not say anything about some of the less than ideal things that President Trump does uh from a lot of the people who are kind of in my circle so either way sorry for digressing quite a bit right to start with I just wanted to kind of get that out there right to start with and not bury it deep into the briefing because uh over the next few months I'm going to have to increasingly start talking about more issues that may be a little bit more controversial uh than I personally want to talk about but uh we may have to uh as time goes on either way with that out of the way let's actually get to to the meat of the matter today and let's start off with the Southeast region so as many of you know we are still awaiting any sort of development whatsoever with regards to the Jeffrey Epstein documents same thing with the JFK files uh the RFK files and the MLK Jr files yeah I have really kind of scoured the internet really tried to figure out if there's anything new that's been released and so far I haven't seen anything uh new that has been released since the whole binder Scandal has just kind of been dropped forgotten there has been a lot of rhetoric back and forth between attorney general Pam Bondi and the FBI and various agencies and officials and things like that however really nothing that we can sink our teeth into has been uh released so this Scandal kind of continues I know that a lot of people are are right now in kind of making excuse mode for for this decision and and this in these developments but once again uh just purely going off of what these official government agencies have stated they're they're not uh they're not meeting their end of their own agreement so similarly deportations are down uh in terms of the numbers that have been released now granted there's a lot of misleading information out there when it comes to immigration data and numbers one of the things that has complicated the issue quite a bit is ice and the department of homeand security not entirely being forthcoming with their statistical data so if you scour their websites and you look at their press releases and things like that there really isn't that much information to go off of and as we all know when government agency doesn't tend to release that much data we know well we get a particular feeling about that don't we so trying to be as Fair as humanly possible it was probably a very ill-advised move for ice to start publishing daily deportation numbers because deportations criminal investigations these things take time and you're you're not exactly going to be able to get this many people per day and and categorize it it's going to be hard to do it's it's better served as has been indicated over the past few years uh ice was already doing it kind of the best way which is well roll up at the end of the month and tell us how many people you uh successfully found detained and deported right going through this whole process so ice did not do that uh they wanted a little bit of a PR kind of campaign right to start with which is which is fair if that's their goal but it has made it very challenging because when you present daily deportation numbers and then you take that away people tend to be a little bit uh skeptical about that so I'm not entirely sure how the situation is going deportations are continuing criminal investigations are continuing but in terms of the Big Data big data is hard to analyze on a small scale so we have to have a little bit more time before we can draw an assessment on that now granted president Trump has been president for almost two months now so I think next month will be two months so we'll have that 60-day window uh coming up in a couple of weeks or or in a week or so and uh we'll be able to draw a little bit more conclusion from that so once again it's not fair to make an assessment on day one uh you know coming at Donald Trump and the Trump Administration on January 21st saying why haven't you deported 5 million people that's not a fair expectation but we are starting to get into the land of fair expectations okay 60 days has elapsed what have you done in terms of deportation numbers right so uh and if the numbers aren't uh particularly overwhelming if they're a little bit underwhelming then why why is that are there mitigating circumstances that we the American people the taxpayer who is paying for all this uh or are there mitigating circumstances that we can kind of uh lean on for that now back at the doj the FBI is also investigating uh the recent swatting incidents which I I will talk about in more detail in just a moment but I didn't want to mention it here because we're kind of in the Washington DC region also down in Florida I briefly wanted to mention that the marago airspace incursions continue from what I can tell in my limited research this seems to be more along the lines of a just general AV ation Pilots not paying attention to notam changes down there however we do need to kind of keep this in mind because this is more of a national security issue especially when Trump flies down there for the weekend or spend some time at Mar Lago it's a congested airspace already so it's a little it's a little bit understandable you know a notam expands the T the temporary flight restriction expands uh in a Noam that Pilots don't catch because it drops an hour before their flight and they didn't check it that morning so it's a little bit more understandable however again when it comes to National Security a little bit more of a heightened awareness would probably be a good idea for any general aviation Pilots down there in Florida in Palm Beach moving to the southwestern region I briefly wanted to mention an incident that occurred yesterday that I that occurred before I could put it in the wire and this was an incident involving a drunk driver the driver of a semi-truck was drunk and driving on I35 causing a pileup uh which ended up killing five people and injuring 11 more people so very significant crash uh these things are becoming a lot more I did want to briefly mention this because it is a horrific crash something to to most certainly be be on the lookout for be mindful of uh this has been a problem for a very long period of time so I don't want to make this out to be like it's a new issue but I haven't talked about it myself at Great length yet but I but I have been thinking about it uh with regards to commercial Trucking and both uh immigrant drivers drunk drivers people who don't necessarily speak great English for instance this this uh driver here at the scene when he was arrested uh he didn't speak English uh very well at all so once again it's a big issue but it's been around for a long time I remember even when I was a kid this was a problem and kind of in my local community as well but I did want to mention it because this again was a more horrific crash than normal and it is once again another call for increased vigilance moving over to the western region as many of you have already noted throughout the country but mostly centered in Seattle a lot of Tesla dealerships and Tesla Vehicles cyber trucks or just regular uh Tesla models that have been parked in public have been assaulted attacked um vandalized set on fire uh you name it so the standard standard Seattle kind of demonstration tactic this is once again not particularly new this has been happening really ever since Elon Musk uh kind of started having a little bit more of an active role in the Trump Administration however it's intensified over the past week uh with regards to the targeting of Elon Musk and his platform so for instance Twitter or X was also hit with a pretty big Cyber attack uh on Monday I believe which took the website down for a few hours uh again Elon Musk himself stated that the website was uh targeted via a nation state level actor or someone who dedicated a lot of funding to launch a DDOS attack both of these incidents both the targeting of Twitter and the targeting of uh Tesla vehicles and cyber trucks this is definitely a textbook case of low intensity conflict however it it might become more of a problem as time goes on right now it's just something easy for low-level activists independent malign actors to lash out it's you know Molotov cocktail doesn't doesn't take much uh brain power or funding to to do so it's going to be one of those things that probably continues for a while Switching gears significantly like I mentioned in the wire there was an incident involving American Airlines flight 106 in which an engine uh caught fire upon landing at the airport there in Denver so far there hasn't really been any word on what caused the fire or what caused the mechanical issue that led to the fire upon landing and thankfully everyone was able to evacuate and there were only a few people who got minor injuries from from egressing the aircraft I knew that it's not that interesting of a topic to talk about however I think that it is a good case study for you know paying attention being situationally aware we say these things all the time and sometimes it just gets kind of drowned out because people say oh we're going to you know talk about risk assessment safety again but look at what's happened you know it it tends to be very very important they there's a reason that the flat attendant say when we're going to erress this aircraft leave all your stuff behind because people have died uh because people were trying to get their bags out of the overhead bin instead of trying to evacuate the aircraft and even though this turned out great in this case you know seeing a a lot of people get off the aircraft with their bags is not particularly a a good thing in terms of survivability so thankfully once again everyone survived this crash however this could have gone uh very very badly uh but either way it worked out in the end I guess before we move overseas I briefly wanted to to talk about some of the swatting incidents that have occurred over the the past few days few weeks a few months really since the election because this has become an increasingly significant problem for a lot of conservative influencers out there which is is kind of an interesting development interestingly enough when I wrote the wire on this the other day uh I like an idiot realized after the fact that a lot of you especially those of you outside the United States might not know what swatting is so I got a lot of messages from from people asking what swatting is because a lot of people didn't understand the classically quintessential American phenomenon of swatting so let me briefly explain what this is because only after I've thought about it for a minute I realized how absolutely insane this whole idea is kind of like when you go to explain something you realize how crazy it is this is one of those times so so for those of you who don't know swatting is the act of a Mali actor out there calling in a fake police report to our Emergency Services phone number 911 to report some kind of horrific crime in progress usually some kind of kidnapping or mass shooting or something like that and the entire goal of doing this is to try to get the Police SWAT unit this is where it comes from uh to come and kick the door in at that location and and maybe kill someone so that's the kind of gist of how this works so someone calls in a fake uh oh my gosh there's a mass shooting going on at this location or a kidnapping or something like that some brutal crime is going on at this address the police of course freak out and respond in force uh to this address and kick in the door drag people out and and it just increases the potential for something bad to to happen at this at this location so when I was trying to figure out a way to to explain this really the elephant in the room for again the non-americans out there is why would a malign actor use this as an attack Vector why would this why is this even a thing surely if a false police report is made this should be easily resolved by a quiet knock at the door and a you know happy and polite we're just checking on things because we got a call so sorry to bother you have nice day kind of thing but no it's it's called swatting because in many jurisdictions the potential is extremely high for SWAT to kick in your door without a warrant and without knocking all based off of a fake 911 phone call so we can see how this has become kind of a Threat Vector for malign actors it's not really a prank or an inconvenience it's it's quite literally a an attempt to get the police to kill someone on someone else's behalf so just think about it for a second you're you hear someone trying to kick in your door or bashing on your door really loudly at 2: in the morning you roll out of bed you're groggy you're half dressed you're not thinking clearly you maybe grab a firearm to see you know what the noise is cuz you may you may think it's a robber or or someone trying to break in right and there you go you answer the door with a gun in your hand and you're instantly shot by police with no questions asked so in the United States answering a bump in the night is very risky uh not because it may be a criminal but because it might be the police so unfortunately this is I know it seems really biased to explain it like this but from a risk management perspective this is the truth we may not want to think about it but it is the truth so the name alone swatting should not be possible it's it's it should not be a thing that happens but it's so common now that it's become a hugely popular way of uh usually uh political conservatives being targeted I haven't actually ever heard of a politically liberal like commentator journalist or something like that being swatted which is kind of interesting really this brings about a larger question uh which is the the whole idea kind of boils down to you're telling me that we we live in a time where falsely calling the police on someone might actually get them killed instead of a minor inconvenient knock at the door you know that that's really the real question that kind of goes unanswered here I personally don't like it I really don't and I and I don't like the fact that I have to phrase it this way and I don't like the fact that I have to put so many disclaimers in front of an opinion on this kind of thing because as we all know the issue of law enforcement in America has been been a very very contentious IC over the past few years for many good reasons and for many not so good reasons and it's hard to tell those reasons apart sometimes so I don't have an answer for you uh but this is the way that it is uh malign actors know they're trying to induce a a a situation where a police officer can possibly make a bad decision now does this happen in every case no a lot of major cities which get swatting calls all the time these jurisdictions have a plan for this they have officers have discretion they're making good decisions in a lot of these Squad in cases but the fact is is that in some jurisdictions a lot of police take the bait and they roll up thinking they're going to stop a mass shooting not thinking that they are being used as a pawn not thinking critically not thinking that the phone number did not match the place where they're saying they're calling from you see how we can kind of go down this this rabbit hole and and they immediately go into react mode and it the it's just complacency just kind of compounds things so the fact that the FBI director the new director cash Patel the fact that he even acknowledge that this is possible confirms this is your confirmation everyone this is your confirmation that sometimes police do go in guns blazing now again it's a tough thing because if there was a mass shooting in progress you would hope that the police would come in and you know respond rather rapidly right you would hope that would happen unfortunately in a lot of cases it's hard to to strike that right balance of critical thinking and uh the speed of which a response is necessary very tough question I don't I don't envy anyone who has to make that decision for sure but it is a it is a problem so but that being said and taking all of this into consideration I don't want to beat down I don't want to beat down law enforcement uh without offering Solutions so there are a few very easy things that can be done to prevent swatting and to eliminate this completely or mostly as a Threat Vector uh reduce the risk for both the citizen population and the police it's all reducing the risk for both of these demographics would be great instead of just relying on reducing ring the risk for one of them so local law enforcement especially smaller less well-funded jurisdictions really do need to have a swatting plan in most jurisdictions all 911 calls indicating a very severe uh crime in progress have to be followed up on uh but there are some ways to make this as safe as possible for everybody so in short communication is the entire solution really that's that's it that's just improving communication would solve this problem completely you can even create what we in in the Intel World call Eis or essential elements of information essentially a a list of things to double check before we get all kind of spun out of control on something and it doesn't it can be done automatically as a software solution in most of the uh software packages and software Suites that are used by law enforcement or especially 911 dispatchers so for instance if a person is calling from a number outside of the zip code for where the call is allegedly taking place that should be an indicator that something's not quite right here so if a person is claiming that they are getting ready to shoot up a a school or something like that and they're outside the school right now but 911 call dispatchers can geolocate that 911 call is taking place five or six states away uh do you see how we can automatically with software Solutions identify the potential for a swindling taking place same thing with a very simple shift change briefing right one of the big problems with swatting is that the the people doing the swatting these Mali actors they know the shift change for a law enforcement jurisdiction right they know a police department shift change procedure and a lot of times what they'll do is they'll call during one shift and get somebody swatted during one shift and then they'll wait for a shift change to occur knowing that that Police Department is not going to mention the swatting incident and so the next shift gets on gets on board they you know start their shift and that second shift doesn't know that a swatting incident took place so they SWAT him again so now you see how we're going around the clock if there is a shift change briefing and no one mentions the swatting well every single shift can be hit with a swatting incident and this can happen for for many many times in a row and this usually does happen this happens quite a lot because the swatters know that most in most cases with most shift changes they're not going to mention the swatting but it would be very very easy for a shift Captain to basically say look guys hey just be aware we got a fake report at this house it's a prominent conservative influencer if you get a Call of a violent you know crime taking place at this house just be mindful that it's probably another swatting incident you know we have to respond anyway but still just be mindful don't go their guns blazing kind of thing and that would neutralize it right that would neutralize most of it it would still be inconvenient for the homeowner but you don't need to get out there and slam somebody on the ground every single shift change you know every single shift throughout the day doesn't need to involve a person you know being treated like they's some kind of criminal in their own home but this would be very very easy to do and these are very these are solutions that could be affected at the very lowest levels possible now speaking of higher level things when we're talking about the FBI getting involved well we all know that the NSA and the FBI and the CIA and all these federal agencies spend hundreds of thousands of manh hours to track down Grandma you know at the capital building on j6 but they don't seem to be very interested in figuring out where these highly traceable highly investigable crimes are taking place with regards to swatting right it's very it would be extraordinarily easy to isolate someone who swatted someone else but the demand hasn't been there so hopefully uh the demand for this kind of of crime Vector taking place uh can be addressed uh by the FBI we will certainly give them the chance and we will hold them accountable uh if nothing seems to be done on that front so of course it's a very controversial issue it's a very controversial topic but sometimes we've got to talk about these things and uh get this out in the open so that we can get towards a solution right so hopefully we can isolate this and stop this from happening to to Really anyone at this point I forgot to mention all of the people who this has happened to over the past couple of days have been largely conservative influencers uh honestly I just as a disclaimer I don't know most of these people I think at least 80% of the people on this list have me blocked personally on social media so it's very interesting that a lot of the people who are being swatted are not I I would personally not classify them as being particularly inflammatory a lot of them are uh not I I personally I know inflammatory but I personally wouldn't even classify them as being conservative so Centrist at best so it's very interesting that it it doesn't necessarily seem to be aligned so much with political ideology so much as just an alignment with President Trump so a long a lot of the time it's it's really going to be impacting the people who are writing positively or speaking positively on social media about uh president Trump so again that seems to be the in this particular case the most common uh Vector for targeting uh I guess we'll have to see if this expands to include more people but really the the more politically conservative people who I would have expected this to happen to are not really being targeted at least not yet so I guess we'll have to see how that all works out Switching gears significantly let's move to the North Sea for a moment again tensions are high on the high seas as I noted in The Wire the captain of the merchant vessel soong has been arrested he at least British media has seemed to confirm whatever that means seem to confirm that he is a Russian national and he has been charged with manslaughter as one of the crew members uh involved in this Collision incident uh was has been lost at sea uh and presumed dead at this time so criminal investigation is ongoing just like Aviation it takes a very long time for any kind of investigation report to come out and a lot of the people in the maritime space tend to walk on eggshells around Maritime issues involving very large uh companies a lot of times because there's a lot of uh there's a lot of legal implications for saying what caused this or what caused that it's so so you tend to see a little bit more risk aversion when it comes to assessments on things like this everybody's suddenly well we need to wait and see you know that's the kind of thing uh that tends to happen now of course from my perspective I am not in the maritime Community uh I am in the world of of intelligence and and threat assessment and things like that so just for me personally when a commercial tanker vessel gets struck by a container ship and it looks to me like it's a very deliberate Collision I'm personally going to treat it like it's a deliberate Collision until we can maybe excuse that behavior later on especially during a time of heightened heightened awareness and and heightened uh International tensions it seems like they're they're treating this as more of a negligence kind of thing but it's hard to say we're proba not going to get that much more information on this is one of those things that's very very hard to prove uh even with the data recorders on on both vessels it's going to be very very hard to prove but generally speaking when one vessel sitting at anchor gets T-boned by a cargo ship that could have seen them for a very long distance away we have to assume that there's some level of either extremely gross negligence or an INT intentionality Behind these actions for now that's kind of how the investigation is sitting and like clockwork I guess just going to have to wait and see how it works out moving over to Eastern Europe let's talk about Ukraine I know it's been a long winding and very contentious road to get here but we may be and I don't wish to speak too soon but we may be able to taste a little bit of a peace deal very very soon diplomatic efforts are ongoing you can see this with the even tracking the Diplomatic planes of of diplomats flying around throughout Western and Eastern Europe so far nothing said in stone uh it seems like Putin is very much in a good uh bargaining position he has either achieved for himself or been granted by the West A very handsome position diplomatically for instance the NATO Chief has granted him the concession of saying verbally in a media interview that Ukraine is not going to join NATO now whether that's true that's going to be up for Putin to to make the decision on no one else it's just it's his personal decision alone so I don't know if it's true or not NATO has certainly been very untrustworthy on the same claims before but again it is a good diplomatic concession to make to get Russia to even come to the table same thing with the kers defensive this is something NATO didn't really have a hand in stopping uh but the kers defensive the ill- fated foray into the Kur region of Russia is is largely over the conflict is mostly boiled down to largely nothing at this moment or very very little operations I don't wish to make light of the issue at all or or sound insulting but if we're going to use a doctrinal term to describe what's going on we might call it mopping up operations so Russia is mopping up the last uh bit of UK Ukrainian presence inside the the Border region of Russia the K region whereas most Ukrainian forces have have already kind of withdrawn back into Ukraine so again may be distasteful to to describe it in that manner but that's the doctrinal term Russia will continue clearing their territory over the next few days but now that this offensive and this kind of thorn in Russia's side is largely over Russia is in a better position uh a little bit more favorable of a position to to come to the negotiating table from Ukraine's perspective Ukraine really doesn't have that much negotiating room at all uh granted Ukraine is not really going to be negotiating for herself it's going to be the United States really negotiating on Ukraine's behalf because as we all know this is how this war has gone really from the from the get-go there have been a couple of times over the past few years really right when the when the invasion started uh right when uh Russian troops were kind of on the outskirts of Kiev there were uh Talks Of Peace at that time uh however it's um it's a very contingent topic that people would had a much higher pay grade than me you're going to be talking about for many many years the bottom line right now is that we we may have the first real genuine chance for peace in Ukraine in many many years and it's really going to largely be on the diplomats involved as to whether or not this is going to happen things happen very quickly in the Diplomatic space and all it takes is a phone call all it takes is one off-hand comment or remark and uh you know years of progress is set back so hopefully diplomats can kind of keep this going and we can we can actually achieve peace in Europe for for a while at least so that's pretty much all I have for this week I know it's not particularly helpful sometimes a lot of waight and sees I'm sorry about that sometimes that happens but let's talk about the intercepted ghostnet reports uh this week was really good I think the weather kind of helped out a lot of people even though uh the time zone changed and I don't think a lot of people remembered that it did uh for for transmitting either way that's okay a lot of people tend to operate for 3 or 4 hours instead of just the you know 30 minute or hour window that that the uh radio network is set up for so I got a lot of messages from a lot of people a lot of people were testing not so much news uh but a lot of uh a lot of people testing back and forth sending messages sending emails so it's it's a good uh Network that is is constantly growing every every week uh that goes by and I am still working on it I'm still working on improving it I've got a lot of Publications that I'm working on I have two separate uh supplementary Publications that I'm working on right now uh they're going to take me a while so uh just please bear with me while I I work on of the stuff that will help improve the ghost net in time so that's all I have for today thank you guys all for sticking with me thank you all for your all of your support and uh thank you for sticking with me again through some of these more contentious issues unfortunately I wish it wasn't the case I would like to talk about nothing but sunshine and rainbows but uh sometimes we have to get to the meat of the matter not necessarily uh in terms of dwelling on the bad stuff but by you know discussing it and and trying to get to Solutions right that's what we're trying to do here so it's all in good faith I know that's not a thing that happens on the internet too much uh these days but it's all in good faith trying to do the best we can and I think there's a lot of value in just trying to uh keep moving forward so we'll try to keep doing that and I guess we'll see what next week brings so again thank you all for watching thank you for your support and I will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for April 6th through the 12th, 2025. It's been a very busy week, like I say all the time nowadays, but in this case, I'm afraid that this week has been a swing and a mess on my part, at least from a research perspective, which we'll get to in a moment. Sometimes Intel work is like that. A lot of times you have to do an awful lot of work to come up with a giant pile of nothing or just get stuck at some step along the way. So, I'm afraid I've been a little bit preoccupied with uh some research that hasn't really panned out. So, I haven't had much time to dig much uh into what has happened around the world this week, but let's go ahead and talk about the global strategic concerns right up front. And in the United States this week, the trade war has continued. So, lots of ups and downs, not a whole lot to sink our teeth into. We're just going to have to wait and see. When things are chaotic, it's probably a good idea to let things pan out and see how it works. As far as the tariffs go, it looks like most of the tariffs uh on on the rest of the planet from the United States have either been paused for 90 days or they have been reduced to 10% uh for 90 days while negotiations are ongoing. At the moment, the big tariff conflict appears to be between the United States and China, both of which are digging in. So, as things stand right now, the United States has a 145% tariff on Chinese imports and China has a 125% tariff on American imports. This has obviously amounted to what is essentially a trade embargo between the two nations. Uh, this is very obviously not something that is economically sustainable in the long run. So, I would expect by this week to have some more information on Chinese American trade negotiations. More specifically around the United States, aviation concerns have continued to grow over the past month or so. Since the election, there have been a lot of shakeups at the FAA and various uh airports around the country regarding personnel and things like that. But the past few weeks have been rather kinetic. For instance, there was a fist fight between air traffic controllers earlier this month in the tower during flight operations in Washington DC. Uh this is coupled with a couple of days ago a couple of aircraft clipped wings in Washington DC. There have also been a few highle retirements. For instance, uh the chief of all air traffic control doctrine and management retired announced his retirement earlier this week. So, it's a fairly kinetic time. Of course, the media is going to focus on things like the the plane crashes and problems with general aviation that are more typical and not really out of the norm. But when it comes to other things like fist fights at airports becoming a huge problem now, even apparently amongst staff it seems, and other things that are adjacent to the aviation community, these concerns are beginning to mount and uh there's been increased scrutiny on the way that air traffic control is handled throughout the country. Moving over to Eastern Europe, the situation with regards to the Ukrainian war continues really without much change. However, this week the United States and Russia have begun more direct negotiations with regards to how this conflict is going to shake out. This is not really new. The United States and Russia have been working on this for a few weeks now. However, the talks are beginning to become a little bit more high level and a little bit more publicly high level. So, this is probably a positive tone for the the how the Ukrainian war is hopefully going to come to an end, but no real public progress has been made. Sometimes that's uh that's the way that it is. And uh sometimes in the world of diplomacy, no news is good news. So uh nothing bad has happened so far between the United States and Russia. So that's that's probably a positive thing for now. Moving down to the Middle East, the strategic buildup continues as before. I know we're tired of hearing about it, but it still continues and it's still continuing to get more and more substantial. The grand questions are starting to be asked on the on the national stage of is this buildup for Yemen or is this build up for Iran or is this build up for somewhere else? Uh who knows? It's really hard to say at this moment, but the the buildup does continue. The United States, more specifically, has continued bombing nearly daily in Yemen, and we'll talk about which assets are conducting that bombing here in a moment. But over in Diego Garcia, where we're going to be spending most of our time today again, there have been a lot of indications and warnings of uh increased logistical efforts. So, we'll talk about that in just a moment. Though, moving to the strategic movement tracker, our fleet tracker for this week, things have remained very much the same as before. The Nimus has arrived in the Pacific theater and is cutting some circles out there in the North Pacific Ocean at the moment. The USS Euima has been in and out of Port Norfolk for a few days now. I think she's conducting some sort of exercise, probably some follow-on training regarding the exercise a couple of weeks ago. No real indications and warnings of a major deployment, but both the Euima and the Wasp have been seen moving in and out of Norfolk a little bit more often than is normal. So, we'll see how that works out. But either way, they are not a factor. Neither of these flat tops are a factor for what's going on in the Middle East. That is squarely on the Truman and the Carl Vincent. The Truman is in the Red Sea and the Carl Vincson was observed off the coast of Oman a few hours ago. We don't have an exact location for either of these carrier strike groups obviously because you know operational security. However, aircraft uh who have been conducting logistics flights to these carrier strike groups have been observed on ADSB. So, we can kind of get a general gist of where they're located. And the Carl Vincson was definitely off the coast of Oman at least a few hours ago. Both of these carriers, their mission is somewhat ambiguous, but it's very very likely that both of these carriers are conducting strikes in Yemen. We've seen a very sharp increase and at least the Houthi is reporting things blowing up. So the SNCOM has announced various bombing campaigns. The White House has been talking about it quite a lot. It's hard to pin the tail on the donkey as to which carrier is doing which bombings, but that's the kind of situation as it stands for now. Moving down to Diego Garcia. I don't want to hyperfixate on this location too much in the grand scheme, the big picture of things, but I do have a lot of satellite images to cover. I've already bought them, so I might as well talk about them. Uh, this image is from the sixth is probably the best image I have this week of the South Parking Apron. As we can see, six B2s are still there. Six tankers are still there. Hangers still may or may not have bombers in them. Probably empty, but you never know. One of the more interesting images this week came from April 8th. Again, this is a commercial imagery, so please forgive the Looney Tunesque distortions on this image. I can't really help it that much, but this image shows that three of the B2s were missing. So, three B2s and three KC135 Stratakers were missing. Now, again, most people might say, "All right, fine. They're aircraft. They were off bombing something in Yemen or doing something." However, a little analytical rule of thumb is that when you're looking at satellite imagery from an intelligence perspective and you're trying to figure out what's going on, sometimes the time of day that the image was taken is more valuable than what's in the image. In this case, we have three missing bombers and three missing tankers. Now, you may say one of two things happened. Either one, those bombers are secretly in those hangers uh hiding and they're doing some kind of something on the bombers that they don't want satellites to see. Very good theory. But a more likely theory is that the three bombers took off and they took each a tanker with them wherever they went. Now again, time of day matters. This image was taken at 0443 Zulu time, which works out to be around about4 to 11 local time. So middle of the day, more or less, around lunchtime. So this image was taken during the daytime. So what? Well, for one, one of the main theories as to why these B2s are here is because of the story, the narrative that's being pushed either by a lot of so-called oent pages on Twitter or by the White House or the Pentagon themselves or everyone is basically saying these B2s are for Yemen and they're conducting bombings in Yemen. And that may be true. That may be true. However, the Houthis have not reported a single daytime bombing at all. uh certainly not with large bombs that are going to be delivered by a B2. Now, there have been hellfire strikes here and there from drones. Uh there have been a few sporadic bombings during the daytime. We have footage of this, so we know these this has occurred, but the Houthis have mostly reported these very large scale bombings. The the large targeting, the large deliberate targeting, not the dynamic stuff, the deliberate stuff, which is what B2s are going to be doing. That kind of targeting has taken place during the nighttime, which makes sense. So, if the B2s are missing during the day and they're not bombing in Yemen, where are they? Where did they go? That I cannot speculate on. I do not know. You can make the argument that it's it was a training flight. These that three B2s took off uh with their tankers and they flew somewhere for training. I don't know why you're going to break multiple world records to land at this place and and conduct a forward deployment like you've never done before just to do some localized training. That's not something that B2s normally do. I don't know. I'm sure there's plenty of theories out there, but I thought it was interesting that it does not make any sense for these bombers to be gone during the daytime if they're conducting bombings in Yemen when no bombings have been reported in Yemen. So, that was kind of an interesting tidbit from the April 8th. Also kind of interesting as we can see there are two C5 galaxies sitting on the runway. And just to show my homework a little bit, you can 1,00% say that these are in fact C5s and not C17s as many people have claimed. These are C5s because I can load this satellite imagery into ArcGIS and do what's called point mineration. Basically, I can measure things with a very very good accuracy. the end. If I were to use my measuring tool here to measure the wingspan of whatever aircraft is on the runway, I can compare that to what the US Air Force says is the wingspan of a C5 Galaxy. And in this case, I'm off by a couple of meters. So, with a resolution, uh, image resolution of 1 meter, I'm off by two pixels. So, sorry about that. But either way, uh, pretty close. So, we can say with a pretty good certainty that these are two C5s sitting here delivering cargo to Diego Garcia. So, pretty interesting stuff. Other images I already got this week are from April 9th. Again, the analyst nightmare of clouds over the target. This has been the bane of existence for most military analysts who look at imagery since uh World War II, and it's still the same today. I can't afford a synthetic aperture radar image to punch through these clouds. And and a lot of the satellite images uh that we can buy images from commercially, they don't have infrared either, so it doesn't help us out too much. But we can still see a handful of B2s peeking through the clouds. And the next day, we also have a free satellite shot. Sentinel 2 imagery from April 10th confirms that all six bombers are back at base along with their respective strat tankers. And we do have one C5 parked on the runway as well. And one of the interesting notes from this image is that one of the B2s appears to be maneuvering. So either she's just taxiing around, testing something, maintenance checks, whatever, or she's returning or departing. Either way, kind of an interesting image, even if it is a low quality rendering. Now, one of the things that we have to be mindful of when it comes to looking at runways and blurry images of aircraft is hyperfixation. A lot of people are looking at this island, and a lot of people are looking at this parking apron here. And the US government knows, the Pentagon, and whoever federal agencies are watching this video right now certainly know that people like me are watching this to get a feel for basically if we're going to go to war or not. And because the national intelligence agencies are watching this, they may be inclined and the forces at this island may be inclined to pull a little bit of a sneaky. So, while we're looking down here at the South Apron, it's easy to forget that this isn't the only parking area on this airfield. There is a North Apron. So, I did get a shot of the North Apron just to confirm. I already had a hunch, but I did get an image to confirm that no, there is nothing going on at the north parking apron. is uh an unused portion of the base normally, but I would have expected maybe a C5 or C17 to park here if the south south apron gets a little bit full. Uh so if we start to see more strategic assets start to stage here, we'll have to keep on an eye on the North Apron, too. But for now, the situation here is Nister or nothing significant to report. A giant fat nothing. And even though nothing is occurring at this part of the air base, this is a good reminder to avoid slipping into the analytical trap of failing to zoom out. And to zoom out this week, I did. If we were to go back to our Sentinel imagery and zoom out quite a bit, there have not just been aviation concerns this week, but also maritime concerns. So, even though you guys have not seen this work, I have been tracking the ships as they have been coming and going from Diego Garcia simply because I'm interested to see if this location is starting to be used more as a jumping off point for very uh long-term military operations. And unfortunately, my research has been rather inconclusive this week. I did find two unidentified vessels that seem to be rather new to me over the past few weeks or so. And I will share with you some of my homework in trying to identify these vessels. So, one of the reasons we may want to be mindful of this is again taking a more holistic approach. Just tracking B2s, as cool as it is, and looking at these very, very expensive aircraft on satellite imagery is is interesting. If we're trying to get a much more bigger picture of things, you're not going to be able to fly in enough bombs on a C5 or C17 to sustain a long-term bombing campaign, right? You're going to need ships. And in this case, these two ships caught my eye. Now, before we jump into what these two vessels are and their true identities, I had to jump back in here after I have recorded this brief. I have edited it. I have even uploaded it. It's all good to go. And in classic fashion, the very minute that I finished the upload for this briefing today here on Sunday, April 12th, I have identified this vessel. So, in short, all of what I'm about to talk about, highlighting my thought processes and all the images and all of the analysis work on my end, all of this is kind of irrelevant now. So, if you want to skip past it, please feel free to do so. But I wanted to leave it in to show you some of the things that I think about and the things I was working toward. And if you want to, you can actually see some of the analytical mistakes that I made going through this. some key assumptions right up front that actually are very very inaccurate. Now, I did start off with this sort of okay, but it really did kind of bug me that some of the data points that I identified never really sat quite right. Anyway, I'll start to go through my process now and kind of jump back and show you what I was thinking and then I'll cut back in at the end and tell you exactly what this vessel is because it's not a supply vessel. Well, technically it is, but not really. Anyway, we'll we'll get to that in a moment. But for now, here's what I started with. Now, the first one, uh, which we'll call composite tanker number one. This was very obviously a a tanker of some kind. Completely normal, not nothing out of the ordinary. It doesn't seem to have visited this location very often, at least based on my um limited research, but it's still going to be delivering fuel probably for the aircraft at this base. Maybe oil, too. Who knows? Probably a variety of petroleum products, to be honest. Either way, we've got a pretty good jumping off point for what vessel that is. The other vessel is a rather unique one. Uh this is very obviously a supply vessel, an auxiliary. And to me personally, uh it looks like a Louiswis and Clark class dry goods auxiliary. Uh that's generally what they're called. Um now I scrolled back through all of the Sentinel imagery and found out when she arrived at this location. That's a pretty good place to start from. When did she get there? That maybe help us figure out which one which vessel it is. And it appears to have arrived between March 11th and March 18th. Some people claimed that she is the USNS Guadalupe on social media. We'll get to that in a moment. But overall, uh, my appointments for this time for this vessel is that she's approximately 213 to 215 m, at least from my rather garbage imagery. So, I'll show you that. Now, one of the reasons I don't think she's the Guadalupe, even though that's what's being claimed right now, is that her whole configuration looks different. Guadalupe has got a pointy bow, and this one has a rather blunted beak, so to speak. It just doesn't look the same. Uh there the folks on the Guadalupe is rather large as well. Doesn't really match. However, if we look at a Louiswis and Clark class auxiliary, it looks very similar to that. It looks like the small folks there in the squared off portion of the bow looks a little bit more accurate. And we can even go a little bit further. Go to Norfolk Naval Station, our favorite naval base for getting top- down imagery of US Navy auxiliary ships. And we look at a Henry J. Kaiser class replenishment oiler and our our satellite image of our vessel that's uh in the harbor at Dega Garcia. And you can see it doesn't really match. It's not the same vessel. However, it does look a lot more like uh a Louiswis and Clark class dry cargo or ammunition ship, right? So, you know, this is generally the kind of back pocket research that most of you will never see, but it's being done in the background. Anyway, I just thought I would share this time around. So again, I got multiple images of these vessels throughout the week, and I was really kind of interested to find out what is the name of this auxiliary ship here, and I got way down into the weeds by creating a table of every single Louis Clark class auxiliary ship with a goal of finding out uh through process of elimination which this which vessel this could be. Again, there are easier ways of doing this, but I I wanted to do the hard work this time around. This is some kind of like junior level intel guy stuff. So, I wanted to do this work uh just to build familiarity with where these vessels are located normally. And through my own work, I was able to basically narrow down uh which vessel this could be. If it is a Louiswis and Clark class auxiliary, it's got to be one of these three because all the ones in red here, uh it obviously can't be those ships. So, I thought, well, you know, none of these were really good fits either. So, I thought, well, maybe it's not. Maybe it's not a Louiswis and Clark. But I measured multiple times from multiple images and the measurements I was getting are not the best. I mean, it could be a lot of different things. I think probably the image from April 5th is the best image I could get of this particular vessel, but again, not really conclusive. Uh it it does look like a Louiswis and Clark class, but it may not be. Um the tanker, it seems a little bit more clear in this image from April 5th. So, uh, the claims that this is the tanker Stenna imperative that that does kind of match the Stenna line of oilers or tankers, excuse me. Uh, those are very impossible to tell apart on satellite imagery. The only way to tell these apart is again by AIS and uh by really good imagery, much better imagery than we can get from a satellite. So, I did work through, just to show my work, I did work through uh one of the classic ways that we track and uh categorize ships since World War II. So, believe it or not, the US Navy uh specifically the Office of Naval Intelligence still does do this by hand. Uh the they classify the whole configuration and what we call the upright sequence. This is done by hand still to this day. So, I pulled the upright sequence for the STA imperative. I found a side shot of the Stenna imperative and I did the upright sequence myself. Now again, this is really nerdy stuff. It doesn't really help you that much, but this is kind of an interesting little bit of Navy lore. This goes back again to the days of World War II uh when imagine you're a submarine captain in the North Atlantic. You're you're hunting merchants and uh you need to know which merchant you sink, right? How do you for instance on all those History Channel documentaries, how do we know the gross tonnage of vessels that were sunk? Well, I'll tell you how we know. The submarine captain looked through his periscope and conducted an analysis of the upright sequence of whichever ship he was getting ready to shoot a torpedo at. And from that upright sequence, we could then determine what ship it was, especially if it's in the dark. Uh all you see is a silhouette and you see masts and funnels and cranes. And you can uh categorize the hole shape and superructure. Well, if you've got a big database or in many cases just a a book, you know, on board the ship of which vessel it is, you know, you can generally kind of put two and two together as to which submarine sank which ship. And that that research combined with the losses, for instance, during the Battle of the Atlantic, the losses on the Allied side, you know, which ship was sunk, you know, at which location and uh on what day, you can narrow down and figure out which ship it is. But this doctrine carries forward to today. So determining the upright sequence for commercial ships is very very important when it comes to trying to identify commercial merchant vessels. And in this case uh it's a little bit subjective. Uh but I did the upright sequence as mast mast crane funnel crane just identifying the features you can see. Again we're looking for big features on board the ship. There is a little bit of room for debate. Modern ships are not like World War II ships. So for instance, in this in this particular image, you could the analyst could make the argument that that second mass there is a king post. But in any case, this is generally what we're going with. And if we also do the same thing with the hole configuration, in this case, it is a raised one uh hole configuration. Some might argue it's a flushed hole. Either way, it's just more data in our pocket. it doesn't really matter because the the upright sequence and the whole configuration for our ship that we see here in the imagery matches pretty good. Uh so we're going to say with a fairly high confidence this is probably the Stenna Imperative as claimed. Again, World War II, we've made a lot of development since then and we have uh really overly watermarked drone shots of some of these uh vessels as well. And we can compare that to the open- source Sentinel imagery. And we can compare it to the image uh the paid commercial image and it seems to match pretty pretty dang close. So as far as the tanker goes, yeah, it's just an imperative most likely. We can also uh check the AIS data. Again, some of you may say, well, why didn't you check the AIS tracking data? I did. Almost all vessels shut off their transponder before they get within a thousand miles of this island. Again, it's a very decently secret place. And uh there is an AIS transponder or receiver here. And none of the vessels who go to this island turn their transponder on. So it's very much a kind of a blacked out place, which is understandable considering it's, you know, largely military use. So that's kind of where I'm stuck at here. One of the reasons why I can't identify this vessel is uh there are a few theories here, uh which you can read on your own. It could be that I'm just stupid and am missing something completely. This could be a standard thing that maybe this isn't a buildup of resources at Diego Garcia. I went through and I looked through the past four years of Sentinel images. Every single time an image was taken, I looked at it and from my own eye, I can't really I mean, there are routine logistics shipments to this island, but I can't say I can't determine right now. I don't have enough data to determine if what I'm seeing in this image, for instance, is anything abnormal. I maybe it's not abnormal. I don't know. Another thing to remember is maybe I'm just misidentifying this vessel. Maybe it could be something else. Maybe it's uh maybe it's a foreign vessel. Who knows? I measured it. I did all this uh point mineration on it and it matches as best I can to a Louiswis and Clark class auxiliary. Another theory is that well maybe the Sentinel imagery is misleading. Maybe they're trying to pull a sneaky on us. Again, coming back to the military deception possibility. Here are uh the past few images where I think this vessel arrived uh at this location and anchored in this spot. And as you can see based on the kind of yellow orange circles, it's been there since at least March 18th. Now, there was a gap of time between March 11 and March 18 where there was no satellite coverage. So, she arrived somewhere between 11 and 18. But maybe she didn't. Maybe that's a different vessel. Uh, it's pretty cloudy. So, maybe she really arrived on the 31st. There's no telling. I mean, maybe they're maybe they're trying to play a shell game here and telling different commercial ships to to anchor in the same spot to make it look like it's been one single ship this entire time when in actuality it's been multiple ships. That's a possibility, too. I say that because if we go back to my chart here of who it could possibly be, uh, based on the images, well, we've got the our three contenders. You can see the dates here. The dates are not matching up. So, something is wrong along here. It's far more likely that I'm just wrong and that I have done something incorrectly up until this stage than than it is for a sort of ghost ship to exist. Ships don't just, you know, appear, right? So, all right. Just to save everyone some time, uh, in the comment section down below, I can confirm 100% that I was wrong. This is not a Louiswis and Clark class dry cargo ship. The entire internet is wrong as well. Twitter is wrong. All of the multi-million dollar think tanks and probably CIA funded naval warfare publications are also incorrect. I have figured out what this ship is. This vessel is the USS Emory S Land AS39. And some of you out there may say, "What in the Sam Hill kind of vessel is that?" Well, my friends, this is a submarine tender. I would like to state for the record that I'm not entirely at fault here, okay? Uh because this ship is not supposed to be here. So, the Emory S Land is one of two ships left of her type in the entire US Navy fleet. There is the USS Emory S Land and the USS Frank Cable. Like I mentioned earlier, it didn't really make a whole lot of sense. There was something a little bit nagging to me about this vessel being called something that it wasn't right to start with. And then the uh actual like AIS data indicated that well, it doesn't it can't really be a Louiswis and Clark vessel either. It doesn't I mean the imagery is kind of bad, but I mean it's almost the same dimensions as a Louiswis and Clark vessel. However, what I was measuring is the helellipad off the rear end. And if you'll see at the very very top image, the the satellite image that I bought here shows a cutout in the uh helipad. So, it's like an offset helipad. And that was the thing that kind of got me going to think maybe this is maybe this is not a Louiswis and Clark class vessel because they they have a helellipad that's obviously uh contained within the hole and it it it just looks different. So anyway, I kind of had an epiphany. It came to me that this is actually a submarine tender, the USS Emory S land, and that's definitely what it is. If you look at all the images you can Google on your own, it's definitely what it is. Now, for those of you who feel a little bit charitable with wasting your time for the past few minutes, this is still very important. So, I was originally concerned about this ship coming to this area to deliver bombs. Well, we know that's not the case now. This ship is here to take care of submarines. This is a submarine tender. So, what does that tell us? So it tells us that the US Navy is going to be running attack subs out of Diego Garcia. Now, now the more astute of you, if you research the USS Emiry Sand and the submarine tender class of ships, you may find that, "Wow, wait a minute. She's been here before." And you would be correct. The USS Emory S Land was stationed in Diego Garcia almost 15 years ago. That's a long time. Right now, here's the kicker with this. There's only two of these vessels left. The Emiries Land and the Frank Cable. Now, the Frank Cable is supposed to be stationed in Guam and the MRA land is supposed to be stationed here in Diego Garcia. Now, here's the kicker. I've got a lot of documentations that state that this ship, the Emory Land, was actually transferred to Guam and the Frank Cable was sent to the west coast of America, back to Seattle, right? So, quite the twist of fate, isn't it? It's not exactly what we were talking about, but in unraveling this mystery of what this ship is, we've actually uncovered something rather new. That's why I couldn't find this ship going back a little ways in the imagery because well, she wasn't there. She was in Guam. And now, at least as of a few months ago, maybe even a couple of years, she's been stationed here in Diego Garcia a little bit more permanently. So, how long has she been at Diego Garcia? I don't know because my sentinel imagery is not that great. During the wintertime, there are sometimes many, many months where I can't get a good image of anything because of cloud cover. So again, I've gone through years and years and years of uh this this area worth of imagery, and I can't find the this this ship here passed a few months ago. So when she got here, she got here in the probably in the middle of March, like I had originally theorized, between March 11th and March 18th. So I don't know. You guys tell me. What do you think? I mean, this is kind of interesting. No, it's not the ship we were expecting it to be, but it is very, very interesting in a completely different manner. So, once again, not particularly new. This is rather old information to be honest, but I think it's kind of interesting and and it does highlight that we're looking at militarizing Diego Garcia a little bit more often because otherwise, why would she be here, right? Again, an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean is very helpful for running submarines uh out of uh the Middle East, so that you know, the submarines that are accompanying the carrier strike groups don't have to wait so long without going uh with mail and uh things like that. So, it's kind of interesting. I don't know if this is a smoking gun that points to, holy cow, we're going to be having more submarine operations out of Diego Garcia. I don't know, this may be the same baseline. So, it doesn't really help us make any more decisions about the seriousness of what's going on at Diego Garcia, but it is very, very interesting. and I I found it to be uh quite the thrilling hunt to fi find out what this vessel is. So either way, this is kind of the research that I have done this week. These are the the facts that we can sink our teeth into. And unfortunately, you know, this this does highlight the difference between journalism and intelligence. If we were to just talk about just the raw facts, hey, there's two ships in the harbor, right? Uh and we don't go into the analysis of what that means or we don't do any of the research to determine what vessel it could be. we we're not going to highlight any of these discrepancies. So the world of intelligence is of course different from the world of journalism. Uh journalism is supposed to tell you just the facts whereas intelligence is supposed to help you make decisions based on incomplete information. And in this case there's a lot of incomplete information. Sometimes that's that happens but either way it is a very good uh week for learning lessons and kind of getting back to the basics of good intel habits to have. Don't hyperfixate on one thing. I know I've hyperfixated on these ships this week, but don't focus on just the aircraft. Don't focus on just this island. This island doesn't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things. It's all little breadcrumbs. All little breadcrumbs of information we're trying to put together. It's like uh it's like a paint by numbers thing. We're trying to paint a picture here, but we've only got like two colors and we can only fill in 30% of the of the spots on the on the painting. So, not going to be a very pretty picture. And you may have to still look at that picture and make a decision. That's kind of what this is all about. showing my homework to uh detail some of the more in-depth things that that we talk about and work through and some of the conclusions we have to come to uh based on very very incomplete and oftentimes conflicting information. So, I know not very interesting, very very boring, but that's what I have for this week. That's pretty much all I've been able to focus on and and work through with regards to what's going on around the Middle East. Now, I do have a couple of things I'm not going to talk about just yet. I do have a couple of other locations. I have not, as you might be led to believe by what I've talked about so far, I have not been focusing only on Diego Garcia. There are a few other places to watch. And watching them, I have been. So, I will hope to have a little bit more information. We have to start developing these things out. We've got to start somewhere, right? So, I'll hope to hopefully have a little bit more information on that over the next month. It's going to take a while for my my work to come to fruition on this to kind of figure out are we going to war with Iran or not or are we doing something else. But either way, wrapping up today with the intercepted ghost net reports. It's been a pretty light week this week, which is kind of understandable this time of year. It's always pretty light. Everybody wants to be outdoors and uh not playing with radio stuff. But that's the eternal battle, isn't it? It's always a uh challenge to keep from being complacent. And uh we most certainly have to remember to not get complacent. Make sure you know how to use your stuff. Make sure you have a plan for communicating with people you need to communicate with if and when communications goes down. We still have to remember submarine cables are still being cut. China is uh still tapping or trying to manipulate or cut or anchor drag over cables all of the time. It's become a very common thing to do. So again, don't be complacent. Realize that the internet may go out for certain parts of the world and it may be hard to figure out what's going on. So, as we all know, you cannot really easily create a communications plan after a disaster. You kind of have to plan on what you're going to do beforehand. And the ghost net is at least a stop gap measure in that regard. So, that's all I have for today. Here are the sources as usual. And thank you guys all for sticking with me today. I know it's been kind of a whole lot of nothing this week. Uh even though there have been definitely a lot of things going on, it's just not a whole lot of conclusive uh activities that we can kind of really get any sort of closure on, I guess. But either way, I'm going to continue keeping a very broad view on things and we'll see what uh see what next week brings. Hopefully, we'll have some more information there. But until then, thank you for all of your support. It really helps when uh when I've got to go through a lot of satellite images and it really helps a lot, too. And uh keeping the mapping project I've got going. So, that that definitely does help quite a bit. So, thank you all for that and I will see you next time.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so as we move forward into a sort of colder time of year and as the election season gets closer um we thought we would throw together a sort of um top 10 list of considerations for uh civil unrest in urban areas in the winter time and some of the some of the unique considerations that winter and more inclement weather bring so we're going to go over a list as more than 10 but we're going to go over a list of things that people may not have thought about so without further ado let's just jump right on into it so first up the very first thing that we have to acknowledge before we talk about anything else is that in the wintertime and in colder inclement climates people are less likely to riot right you know the the sentence if someone were to say uh the sentence you know people don't write when they're six feet of snow on the ground you know that's not an untrue statement um it makes it so much more difficult to riot and and commit violent acts in mass in the wintertime as we know a lot of the more you know severe riots you know minneapolis new york city um chicago detroit some of those more heavily urbanized areas um they get quite a bit of snow and quite a bit of winter weather now granted uh in the wintertime your city cities like you know in florida any city in florida even atlanta you know which has been known for rioting as well um and you know southern california los angeles that's those areas are not going to be uh impacted as much because you know it doesn't really get that cold in the winter time but we do have to remember that in these northern cities some of these northern latitudes they're going to get a lot of inclement weather and it's going to present a lot of challenges not just for rioters but also for people like us who are trying to just survive through the rioting right now that being said people being less likely to riot that does not mean that there won't be riots it just means that the people who will be out rioting in the six feet of snow will be your dedicated hardcore um i hesitate to use the word you know elite rioters but that's essentially what it is you're more dedicated followers you're more dedicated people who are dedicated to violence and looting and rioting and things like that so if somebody or a group is out riding and you know a lot of ice and snow and and colder weather they mean business so but you know just just keep that in mind that you know while people are less likely to ride in the wintertime and in snow and things like that it's not a complete um it doesn't mean there's going to be a complete absence of rioting so up next one of the most significant factors is fewer hours of daylight um fewer hours of daylight is has is a double-edged sword right so basically when we look at some of the rides that occurred such as minneapolis the one that started all of this the riots really the riots started in earnest at around sunset or around you know shortly after sunset right or maybe even shortly before on the following days but we do have to remember what time sunset was you know sunset was at or around you know rush hour time so uh in a lot of cases falling after rush hour because the sun set you know after people had gotten home for the day as we start getting into the winter months our days get shorter and our night our hours of darkness get longer meaning our sunset comes earlier you know obviously this means that your sunset might be before rush hour in a lot of areas well what does that mean that means that a lot of people in these heavily urbanized areas you know instead of getting home turning on the tv and finding out oh hey there was there's a riot downtown they're going to be finding out about this at while they're still at work and so you're going to have a lot of people that rush of traffic you know during rush hour and in some of these major cities there really isn't a rush hour anymore it's just like a three to four hour period of increased um traffic so uh we do have to remember that uh some of these more heavily urbanized areas you're gonna have a lot of people you know sort of trapped at work or that the traffic is gonna get a lot worse and and yet as a theme you'll see going on throughout the rest of these sort of considerations is that they tend to compound on one another for instance less you know fewer hours of daylight also means your solar panels are not going to be able to be as effective as they were in the summertime meaning your night you're going to have fewer hours of daylight so for us at our latitude here in virginia that gets cut in half so um yeah the fewer hours of daylight it means means a lot of things it means that a lot of these you know crimes of riots are going to have a lot more darkness to play with a lot more operating hours right that's something that cannot be underestimated as we move forward into this winter season up next and this was a this is a big one and it is um the prevalence and difficulty of fighting fires in an urban environment in the winter time so i think that fire preparedness is one of those things that people tend to discount or they don't exactly know how severe it can be basically fighting fires is hard enough in the summertime but fighting fires in the urban and urban landscape in the wintertime is makes everything infinitely harder you know pipes and hoses freeze which means that you're going to have to drag hose a lot further you have to keep hoses you know keep water moving through hoses which creates ice you know you also have to remember that during the winter time people use space heaters and other flammable heat sources so your risk for having a fire spread throughout a city goes up anyway and that's not even with a riot right you also have to remember that firefighters endurance is also affected as well it is a lot harder to carry some of this equipment and operate in a winter environment because it's just so much more difficult you also have to remember that you know traffic is affected as well from you know snow drifts so fire trucks and and other first responder type agencies are going to have a harder and longer response time structures are also more prone to collapse from the weight of snow and ice so for instance you know fighting a fire if you've got you know three or four feet piled up on the roof of a building well that's a collapse hazard right there so it's another yet another thing to slow down the firefighting process you also have to remember that snow and ice also change the geographic landscape meaning you know snow hides swimming pools so when you're walking around on the ground and you don't know there's a swimming pool there you could walk in and and suddenly you know you're you're uh you're in trouble if you're a firefighter so you know snow hides things like pools you know stairs drop-offs embankments and and everything is suddenly an entrapment hazard which it wasn't before before the snow fell so there are a lot of hazards to fighting fires in the wintertime which once again slows down operations so it's almost you know a recurring theme like i said is things compounding on one another and you know it's just one of the paradoxes of this is kind of like a spin-off of you know murphy's law which is that you know the harder and the more uh the harder the situation is and the the more desperately you need something the harder it is to get so this is definitely the case with firefighting the hard the more you need a firefighter in your firefighting entity to be to get to your location the harder it is going to be for them to do so just one of those things that tends to happen up next are considerations for personal defense and this one's kind of a longer list because um i don't think people quite take into consideration a lot of the the the winter warfare uh type things that that go into a uh even not even just like an alpine or a snow environment such as you know on the slide here but really even something that's just moderately cold these things can affect you know weapons personnel all kinds of things and very very interesting ways um so you know first off how many people out there can you know accurately and quickly and reliably fire their weapon while wearing gloves you know when heavy winter gloves you know so that's one of you know one thing that not a whole lot of people i i haven't seen anybody practicing that at the range and yet you know we get a decent amount of snow here every year and it's it's certainly cold outside and we all wear winter gloves here in virginia in the winter time even though it's not as cold as like michigan or maine or something like that it still gets pretty chilly here and you know if you're concealed carrying can you draw and reliably accurately and uh and easily engage a target while wearing gloves so that's another consideration people don't quite um think about another thing that people don't quite think about is just the whole concept of sort of aftermarket parts and and um these cool gucci add-ons to their carry weapons and really all you know any of their weapons you know we of course are you know guilty of this as well you know everybody likes a cool looking you know weapon system but how many of those weapons how many of those cool weapons accessories were made with cold weather in mind you know you know i i don't i'm not sure of any sort of ar pistol stock that is or pistol sorry pistol brace i don't have any sort of ar pistol brace that is made and uh tested to extreme cold weather standards whereas the normal you know normal m4 weapon stock is right so that's something to keep in mind that you may not even though granted you know mill spec isn't certainly not a metric for any sort of quality it does indicate in some cases that certain testing was done on certain things whereas a civilian market may not have that problem right another issue that we see a lot of people not really take into account is wearing body armor on top of their winter clothing so a lot of people are you know into wearing plate carriers and things like that but you know even in the military we see the problem of of people wearing body armor on top of their winter clothing and that body armor is you know sitting now instead of sitting flush up against your skin it's now an inch or even two inches in some cases away from your body so the further your body armor is away from your body the less area it covers so you might have you know some things to do with that so you know make sure that you can actually wear your body armor effectively over your winter clothing because as we all know the gucci thing to do nowadays is to have smaller and smaller sized plates another thing is you know physical fitness like in the cold and in the in the rain and the snow and in the sludge and the mud you know how far can you run what are your physical standards right you know it's hard enough to run out with a with a heavy load on flat ground you know carrying something heavy that's hard enough as is and it becomes exponentially harder when you're trying to do that uh in the snow i mean running in the snow is just torture in some cases right depending on how deep the snow is and then not to mention the fact if try running on black heist guess what you're just gonna hurt yourself so uh you know that's another consideration as well is that we have to realize that our transit times if we're trying to go somewhere on foot might heavily be infected you know affected and sort of getting back to the personal gear type thing we have to remember that a lot of you know weapons uh type of lubricants don't necessarily work that well in the cold as well and a lot of people haven't quite thought of this because let's face it you know if anybody's going to carry a gun most people who carry guns outside their home do so concealed in america right and when you have a concealed pistol or something like that it's up against your body so your your body heat is keeping it warm okay well what about if you have to go outside with a rifle now now your rifle is outside it's outside your clothing and it is you know definitely more more susceptible to cold than say your concealed carry pistol so you know a lot of people you know use stuff like um natural like cleaners and clp sort of like frog lube and um you know despite the fact that there's you know of course your youtube backyard scientists out there but just us personally we haven't really had any good experiences using froglube in the cold weather especially if you if your weapons system likes to have a lot of lubrication froglube just ends up freezing and sticking whereas other types of weapons lubricant are perfectly fine but you wouldn't know this unless you actually are you know training in the cold which not a lot of people have the opportunity to do and then we also have to remember things like if you have an optic on your weapon guess what you know cold temperature dramatically affect battery life you know not so much with your lithiums right your lithium batteries but if using like rechargeable batteries or some kind of oddball battery or like an aimpoint battery which is like a you know 2032 better a little watch battery you know your your um your battery life is going to get impacted severely especially with things like nods because a lot of nods nowadays are running off of double a's and which is great because every you know double a's are so common but double a's if they're not lithium you know if they're like a rechargeable double a they're going to have a severely shortened um battery lifetime and it's significant it's sometimes upwards of fifty percent we've just noticed with our own uh own devices and things and then of course you know your flashlights as well so um that's sort of you know a consideration moving forward with you know how many batteries you're gonna carry with you and where you're going to store them right another thing that people don't quite think about in this personal defense category is the sort of crash or the bump in the night preparedness right so i think that everybody or a large portion of people out there who listen to our podcast are have thought about or and are you know pretty pretty well prepared for the bump in the night well what happens if that bump in the night is a riot outside your house and it's you know 17 degrees below zero outside you know are you going to be able to grab your grab your go kit grab your bag eagers from the area and because i'm pretty sure everybody doesn't sleep in winter clothing are you going to have winter clothing in your uh egress system or you have wind good winter boots good socks and things to change your clothes in if you get wet you know that's a huge consideration and we'll move into that when we talk about other stuff but you also have to uh think about can you fit your winter you know winter gear in your go bag like uh one of our guys here uh he he rocks his bag and uh he cannot fit his sleep system inside his bag he has a strap to the outside but his summer one his summer system fits inside the bag but the winter system doesn't because it's such a bulky bag and you know it's a it's quite a consideration considering how much bulk a lot of this winter type gear has another thing to consider is the the nature of of some kind of conflict at night the winter landscape provides a lot of different things one of the things that is pertains to warfare specifically is sound so sound over well-crusted snow where it's you know had a chance to settle down freshly fallen snow tends to absorb sound a lot of times but snow that's been there for a while old snow is crusted over frozen melted and re-frozen that snow sound tends to carry pretty well over that much further away than on normal standard dirt or grass or some kind of other terrain so that's a consideration if you're trying to you know listen for activity that's coming from a long way away or if you yourself are trying to move about without being detected as the sound carries along a long way you also have to remember that snow is obviously white and if you've got a full moon out there well guess what moving around at one or two o'clock in the morning is going to be pretty hard to do if there's a full moon because it's going to be like daylight because that sunlight is going to reflect all that light so if you're trying to move tactically secure your property do whatever you got to do remember it's going to be a lot harder to do in the snow plus i'm not sure of very many people even people who live in in more alpine type environments i'm pretty not very sure how many people have uh winter type camouflage so you know it's we've got to start thinking about these these things that the military has been thinking about for a long time like what like i mentioned with their mountain warfare schools another consideration for the in the personal defense category is wounded wounded personnel so if you get injured if you slip and fall on some black ice or something which is likely to happen or you know god forbid somebody gets shot or injured and you know critically injured in some way well guess what it's going to be a lot harder to evacuate you because uh it's going to be harder to create things like hlz's helicopter landing zones it's going to be harder to to get you you know out of that area right so you know the old adage of you know once again the more you need it the harder and more impossible it will be to get comes into play so um you know medevacs and and and things like that are a huge huge consideration for for something like that so um you know coming back to the topic because i forgot to mention it with the uh the snow light being bright and reflecting light that also enhances people's night vision that don't have nods so for instance on a moonless night with with no snow on the ground and with no city lights in the distance like you know even you know somebody like me with nods is going to struggle to get a good picture of what's going on and somebody without nods and that stitch in that scenario is going to be totally blind like they're not going to be able to see their hand in front of their face you start adding things in like you know a little bit of moon illumination a little bit of star light things like that you're going to start adding that back in and suddenly you know my nods are working at their peak efficiency and you know maybe a human being can have some level of night vision well if you add in snow to that factor guess what you are greatly reducing you're greatly reducing the barrier and the sort of disparity between uh somebody with nods and somebody without nods so and this could be a good thing or a bad thing if you don't have nods guess what you're going to be able to see a lot better in the winter time where there's snow on the ground and when there's ice on the ground well mostly snow but if you have nods guess what everybody that doesn't have nods can now see you better and your uh capabilities aren't increased that that much at all um so that's a huge concern because it looks the snow levels the playing field a lot between people who have nods and people who don't so that's a huge consideration for personal defense and i know this was a kind of a big category so we split it up into uh the next category which is a perimeter defense so one has to remember that with snow and ice on the ground you know all of your security cameras all of your your your motion sensors motion detectors for lights and things they can become obscured by um snow they can also be you know water can get inside them and and freeze them and the glass that's usually pretty cheap because security cameras in america are usually made in china so they're all pretty cheap quality they could frost over pretty easily and things like that so your defenses can be easily hampered or hindered by um snow and things like that you also have to um consider things like you know doors and locks you know sticking or freezing shut um which can create an entrapment hazard so i i know that even here in virginia this happens about maybe once a year or so during the coldest part of the year we'll have you know sticky locks we'll our our car doors will be frozen shut or something like that maybe our back doors got a little sticky but hey if there was an emergency yes with that sticky lock you know that's normally not a big issue suddenly becomes a big issue so snow and ice and well really just mostly snow this is from more northern areas but snow piled up you know can also allow people to get over obstructions like fences and even things like concertina wire you put concertina wire down on the ground you know and which is you know about 18 to 24 inches in diameter and you get a couple feet of snow guess what you could you could walk pretty much on top of that if it's compacted down enough you could walk on top of that and not be bothered by it at all so you know snow drifts love to congregate up against houses and fences and those can easily be used to step up and over should a riot head your way the sort of traditional defense methods of you know going out to you know check your property and things like that those become hindered as well um because let's not forget that you know during in our own experiences when we had our own riots locally um we had one of our guys had to um he basically turned off his air conditioner opened up all the windows in his house and i was very quiet for several hours that way this is one of the things we did so that we were able to hear what was going on because you know an air conditioner for those of you that don't know is quite loud and if you shut your air conditioner off and open up your windows if the the climate is um permissive to this you can hear protesting and rioting from a long way off so that was a huge force multiplier just being able to do something as simple as that well that might not be possible in the winter time if it's you know you know 30 30 below out there you might not be able to open up you know your windows and things like that because it's just simply too cold to do so so that's something to to definitely keep in mind and then going on uh to the next topic which is uh not really a sort of you know combat defense type topic is the food supply so ordinarily food supplies are usually impacted and impacted in the wintertime though usually not severely you might have the occasional grocery store tractor trailer flip over like this one um but you know combined with rioting and shortage and and food shortages in the winter these impacts will be made infinitely worse you know by bad weather so you know we also have to remember that the colder weather results in people tending to consume more calories right um we all know people even our even our us ourselves you know put on a few extra pounds in the winter time which is a combination of you know rich type holiday foods and you know a sedentary lifestyle that people not get outside to to to work out and things like that so you we have to remember though that during the winter time is naturally just throughout the history of humanity winter time has been the time where foods where food shortages are most likely to occur anyway right we've all heard even you know nursery nursery rhymes and children's stories talk about you know the you know stocking things up and saving things up for winter saving things up for a rainy day right so just just naturally what happens and you combine that with the fact that we already have food shortages due to the the sort of covid crisis and uh combined with rioting it's just a it's just a perfect storm of vulnerability right there with our food supply so you know there are a lot of people out there that are already saying that hey we're going to have a huge food shortage you know we can't say if that's true or not but hey it doesn't hurt to prepare for it because we've shown we've shown that it is possible you know and especially considering that in the winter time it's a lot harder and it almost impossible to grow food in a lot of different areas so you know even for us even like right now um and you know come as we come to the end of september we're you know our own personal little gardens are starting to get a little chilly so we're having them you know make preparations for our you know winter crops which is something that it just takes a lot more money to do it you have to run power out there you have to have heating elements in a lot of cases if your stuff's outside you know protecting things from the elements you can only grow certain crops and things like that so you know once again just yet another dimension to the whole perfect storm of vulnerability with the food supply and then moving on to the next one which is cut which is directly tied to this one is the water supply you know you know as one might expect you know water is also a huge consideration in the wintertime because as we kind of touched on it with the fire scenario pipes burst pipes burst and and things happen not just with you know your own residential type water setups but with the city as well and you know municipal uh water supplies so you know pipes bursting are sort of a mainstay of of winter you know winter weather you know if you've ever i remember growing up if you've ever lived in a house where you um where you have a sort of water pump a pumping station a little uh water pump outside it's got a little you know little hud over it or in a lot of cases people put fake rocks over them right you know i guarantee you if you have one of those um you've put a a light bulb or some kind of heating element out there around those pipes and uh it's just so that the pump itself and you know the uh the pipes don't freeze and burst you know i can remember doing that i think probably every year i've had to do that that i wasn't living on city water or something like that um but yeah what are you gonna do if you don't have power though you know so do you have a way to keep your pipes from bursting without using some kind of power and i know a lot of people don't have that uh that don't have that luxury right so um we have to remember that electricity is a huge one as well which is what you know sort of directly segues into our next category which is power outages you know just like i mentioned you know power outages are already extremely common in the wintertime in a lot of areas you know even areas where winter weather is not necessarily a a huge problem so for instance you know one of the one of the things that you'll that the people will notice who've lived in different you know climates around the united states is that you know you live up north and you know you get three feet of snow on the ground everything's fine it's a normal it's like a tuesday right but you know down in virginia or in texas or you know occasionally in like northern new mexico or some you know states like that which aren't really known for getting snow if they get like a freak you know blizzard come through and they get like maybe a quarter of an inch of ice not even snow just quarter inch of ice or something like that the whole state will shut down you know that people have no idea how to drive because they're not used to it you're ho you're gonna have instead of one or two power lines coming down you're going to have a whole city down and it's because they just don't get that you know thing so you they don't get that much snow every year so you know even though you'd think that some of the bigger risk comes from the areas like in the northern states where they do get a lot of snow actually from what we've seen is that there's still a lot of it may not be most risk but you still get a lot of risk and a lot of bad things and unfortunate things happen in in states and in areas which aren't known for snow but may get that one occasional storm and you know what if that one occasional storm was during a riot right and you know bringing the rider element into this if you know if rioters or other more serious malign actors like actual domestic terrorists and not just like unorganized rioters um if they were to capitalize on you know naturally occurring power outages we could see city-wide blackouts that last for a long time and it's not that hard to impact the power grid and it's only a matter of time before these people figure it out and you know once again bringing back the theme of hey everything compounds on something else you know without power to electrically heat homes you know more people will rely on more hazardous forms of heating which exponentially raises the risk of residential fire so you know your power goes out and people get cold they start you know burning things or using you know oil or kerosene space heaters and you know propane start using their gas stove and then suddenly you've got you know risk of gas explosions you've got risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from your neighbors you've got a lot you've got a lot of stuff risk that piles up just because of a power outage so um you know you also have to remember that power being out also means that most security systems will be down as well you know same thing with you know your security lighting and things like that unless you have like battery powered uh lights which are fairly common but there's nobody out there that i know of that has battery-powered security cameras unless it's a dedicated system and even then it's only a like a a ups so that it can safely shut down i don't know if any system that's a residential system that has a whole bank of batteries to keep it going when the power goes out that might be something to look into but you know this of course increases the risk of damage and you know looting and rioting and just general theft it just increases the risk exponentially right and then moving on to the next one this is kind of a different topic one of the a big consideration is complacency we tend to underestimate the impacts that you know normal winter weather has on operations you know we just tend to underestimate that no that's not even counting the rioting and protesting and things you know as such we drastically underestimate the impact of rioting and bad weather uh that those two will have when combined together right and it's something that's very hard to predict i can say the only really good thing about you know the weather is that it's it's universal and it's random in its impacts right everybody's affected pretty much equally and also randomly we don't know exactly how much snow is going to fall we don't know how much ice is going to fall or how much damage it's going to do until it happens so by default the people that are more prepared before bad weather will have an advantage over those who aren't prepared so you know one of the things that that is perhaps a good thing is the lack of preparation on the rioters part for instance just looking at some of the riots and the and the more violent um uh demonstrations around the us the people that are doing them aren't exactly preparedness-minded so i doubt i highly doubt that you're going to have hundreds of riders in the streets all with you know layered clothing waterproof boots changing their socks every half an hour um you're just they're just not going to do that right so they're they're not going to be prepared for winter weather they're barely going to be hanging on just being outside whereas um people like police military and more uh more conscientious and and prepared uh type people will be able to be comfortable outside so you know we have to factor that in as well because these riders are good no they're not going to be even if they're going to go on riding cold weather they're not going to be truly prepared for cold weather they're not going to be hydrating like we all know is a huge thing with cold weather you need to hydrate almost more than in warm winter because you're going to be sweating a lot they're not going to be removing layers when they do start to swim all these other traditional winter weather basics that we all know the writers they're not just not that personality type so moving on to the next one is communications and this is a big one so as one might expect power outages like i just mentioned affect communications greatly you know obviously but when combined with rioting and civil unrest the the impacts are amplified uh you know like everything else we've talked about so far you know a a if you have sort of a unique setup which is becoming popular now which are attic antennas you've got to remember that if you've got a foot or two of snow on your roof that's definitely going to reduce the range of you know attic-based antennas and if you have an outside antenna like the one here on the slide guess what you get even just a small amount of ice build up on it it's going to bend and break um so you have to remember that that the weather definitely impacts your ant and antennas you know you know we also have to remember the technology itself is vulnerable you know from ham radios to cell phones it is rare to find a communications method that is truly weatherproof um you know connections get wet and freeze you know antennas collapse and break under the weight of ice and you know cold temperatures impact electronics of all kinds and just like i mentioned battery life as well you know as such at a time where communications are most needed you know during a time of unrest and rioting and during you know inclement weather is exactly when communications of all types are the most vulnerable you know after all if your communications plan works when things are you know just peachy outside it doesn't really matter that much but if your communications you know fail when things are going badly that can and most likely will have a severe impact on you know your situation so i think that we cannot underestimate the power of communications um so another thing that uh is isn't impacting uh communications are things like transportation which is our next topic so uh this is kind of indirectly related to communications because in a lot of times you know the the old-fashioned uh runner you know messenger is your classic um and timeless way of communicating and in a lot of times where if your cell towers are down your radio is not working because the snow and things like that you're you know this is going to be being able to move from one area to another with a person is going to be crucial and if your roads are shut down too well now you've just eliminated your last most reliable form of communication if that's part of your comp plan but one thing to to remember in this sort of category that goes along with communications is tracks you know tracks are left behind in snow right whether you're driving or walking right so if you're trying to covertly move somewhere it's going to be next to impossible to do on you know fresh snow with fresh snow on the ground if it hasn't been filled in by you know more you can move during snowfall it's fine the tracks will be covered up pretty easily but if it's just snowed and it stops snowing guess what you're gonna leave a huge trail this matters for communications because what if you're trying to go out what if you've got a covert antenna outside one of the big things in the ham radio community is covert antennas right being able to put up an antenna somewhere where your maybe your hoa doesn't approve of you having a ham radio antenna or maybe you don't want you know some kind of federal agency to determine to figure out you're using a radio antenna or have some kind of communications method like that so covert antennas are popular we use them all the time but the point is is that if you have to go out there and service that antenna and get the ice and stuff off of it and check the connections and and dry out the connections well you're just gonna you're gonna lead people right to it if you're walking through snow so that's another huge consideration as well we also have to remember that you know just like i mentioned earlier winter weather in your in your bug out bags and your go bags or whatever you want to call them the kit you carry even the stuff you just take to work every day if you're going to carry winter gear in them just like i mentioned it's going to get bulky and it's going to get a little heavier but another thing is is how you pack your your bug out bag as well you know for instance it's not just as simple as taking out your summer sleep system putting in your winters and putting in your winter sleep system or taking out you know your mosquito netting and putting in an extra thermal layer it's not quite as simple as that because there's and and this is up for debate so just take it for what you will but you know i just me personally what i do is during the summer time i have things the heavier things in my bag higher up and closer to your back like the classic backpacking trick that everybody's talked about for a long time so if you've got a something really heavy like water it goes up right up next to my back as high in my pack as i possibly can can make it it just makes it a lot easier on me and it allows the load to be transferred more efficiently to me personally now the winter time that changes in the winter time i put my heavy stuff at the very bottom of my pack as close to my body as possible that's because i want the center of gravity for my body to be lower so if i'm using skis or snowshoes or something like that i can actually have a better center of gravity better balance and things like that over uneven terrain or like i said with skis so that's something to uh something to factor in as well if you're in that sort of environment even if you're not in an environment where you actually have skis or something like that you know i still do it because things get slippery out there even in the mid-atlantic even as far down as you know the south and you know the the west um you know out west it gets it gets pretty cold out there and you might have some black ice and things like that so that's what i tend to do in the winter time so it's not just what you pack but it's how you pack it changes in the winter time as well and also in the transportation method transportation category we have to remember that snow like i mentioned earlier sort of sort of alluded to snow fills in things like ditches you know it makes it very uh likely for you know you to actually accidentally drive off of the road surface and into a ditch and then that of course once again compounds uh by making it very difficult for you to get your vehicle out of the ditch in the wintertime so you know and then guess what you know if that happens you're stranded in the cold uh in an inclement uh situation where your vehicle is stuck and now now the situation's just gotten quite severely worse so moving on to the next topic this uh another thing that people tend to discount not just in the wintertime but this is also a summertime thing as well but as the morale and you know the mental impact the weather can have um you know being cold and wet is miserable i don't care what culture you are where you grew up or or whatever you know unless you grew up in the you know remote regions of siberia you're gonna human beings have a pre uh a preconceived um a predetermination to being cold and wet it's just miserable right doesn't matter where you're from you know and it's even more miserable if the reason that you're in the reason that you're cold and wet is because you've got to stand outside or stand watch and make sure that people don't destroy your stuff right so that's you know you're already in an angsty situation where you're emotionally invested in something and now you're cold and wet you see how that affects morale it makes you feel pretty bad or it changes your mentality in ways that you you know are situation dependent but you know in cold weather we also have to remember not not just you know mental capacity um of of being you know you know uh sour at the cold weather but um your mental capacity is directly harmed as well in cold weather even the simplest of tasks things you've done your entire life require considerable considerable brain power just like i said in cold weather even the simplest of tasks it requires a lot of brain power and requires a lot of dexterity which is impacted immediately as soon as you step into a cold weather situation and is made worse the longer in that situation so you know we also have to worry about things in the winter time of long-term issues like trench foot or immersion foot or or other cold weather maladies you know dehydration even hyperthermia hyperthermia where you get too hot whereas you know when somebody's next to you know next to a fire on that line they get too hot so that's something to uh to to factor in as well something that we can't quite uh overlook and then finally our last topic which is perhaps the most uh most unfortunate one is things like cbrn concerns cbrn seburni basically riots are going to continue and law enforcement agencies around the us are continuing to use tear gas like it's going out of style tear gas riot control agents pepper spray you name it it's being used and you know however you feel about that the fact of the matter is is that a lot of innocent a lot of innocent bystanders have the have the capacity to be hit or impacted by these things we ourselves have been close enough to rioting and of course not partaking in it just riots happening near our house and we've even felt that familiar sting of tear gas you know just standing on our own uh center on our own property so um it's you know things get things get real close and you know just imagine um you know sitting at mop level you know infinity right where you literally got all your mop stuff on yours way more stuff that's probably necessary in the freezing rain in the dark you know with spotty comms because the power is out you know and a gun that may or may not jam because it's cold and it's kind of sticky and you know with a fire on the next street over you know riders right there at your front door you know you see how all of this compounds together i think that's probably the the the theme for today is that winter time is miserable uh for operations like this and unless you're a military unit which is spent decades training and and trying to impact and and not just survive but actually be an asset during a winter condition you know a lot of civilians especially us are not going to be able to um we're not going to be able to be quite the level of the asset that we hope to be but we can still plan and hope to not be a liability and that's sort of the goal out there so as we move into finishing up here today i hope this has been helpful these are just some of the things that we've kind of been uh working around we've all kind of pitched in two or three of these ideas of hey you know what are some of the considerations for wintertime warfare and winter time you know riding because in a lot of cities they look just like this it's it's a it's a war zone out there in a lot of these situations and um while you know like i mentioned in the very beginning it did you know winter weather does mean that riding is probably going to quiet down but this riots that do survive are probably going to be pretty severe so hopefully this helps trigger some ideas as people who have been listening to us for a while now know really all our businesses is triggering ideas and providing some good information that can help save some lives out there and that's certainly what we hope to accomplish today so that's all we have for today and as usual make sure you go check out our other platforms we have you know some some social media sites out there if you guys still got instagram up we've got our website teespring if you want to support us that way if you're listening to us on youtube we have a we have a podcast if you didn't know already and if you're listening to us on the podcast we also have a youtube channel which we have basically mutual content on both of those platforms we're trying to spread out as much as possible but we do have we host different things on on different platforms so make sure you check all of our stuff out we also have our key base server where we do you know live updates from time to time and uh you'll you'll be able to hit us up there if you have any questions you know also our emails and things like that are also linked below so hopefully that has helped been helpful once again and we'll be coming back at you with another episode talking about more preparedness for the upcoming um sort of insanity that the election season is going to bring on us um very soon so so hopefully we'll not only be able to fight in the shade but also fight in the darkness as we get closer into the winter time so hopefully we'll see you all guys next time and s2 actually out

Kind: captions Language: en hello everyone and welcome back to part three of our series on escape and concealment so uh we were going to have part three be a continuation of the uh restraint escape and we're going to talk about different kinds of european style russian czech style handcuffs and hand restraints but we've actually hit a little bit of a snag uh it turns out that we in our training exercises you know internally here at the shop have snapped off keys and all of the keyways of our foreign style handcuffs so that's going to have to wait for a little bit while we get some more imported in from europe so yeah that should sort of tell you as to how that episode is going to go but in order to put out as much content as possible we already had this sort of part four ready um but we're going to go ahead and put it push it out as part three and this series this particular episode in the series is going to talk about our sort of seer kit type stuff so this is the episode we're going to talk about um that we think is probably going to get a lot more traffic because everybody likes gear a lot more than you know sort of education or training right so we're going to go over all of the gear and stuff in our sort of seer setup now uh the reason that we're talking about this and where we sort of got our motivation from is a few years ago quite a few years ago in 2013 uh this whole seer kit ideology became very very popular and this happened because a a time magazine article was written about in response to special warfare group navy devgrew seal team six whatever you want to call them they put out a solicitation for a brand new survival kit and it was very intriguing because it was something that had not been well it it was kind of a new generation of survival kit and in that kit were a few things like you know handcuffed keys and handcuffed shims and things like that and that was very unique because that had not been seen uh as a military survival kit for a very long time in fact most of the survival kits from the military looked sort of like this you you know your vietnam era you know um line drawing you know typewriter written survival kits and that's you know that's something that the military had been working on for a very very long time and uh hadn't really sort of jumped past that cold war slash vietnam you know anywhere from the 60s to like the 80s style of survival kit they haven't jumped into a new uh era yet so um you know dev grew was looking for a new type of survival kit and that sort of that solicitation was written into a time magazine article and then quite a few different other entities jumped on board as well and they thought hey this is pretty cool because this has got a lot of new technology in it um so that exploded like i said and a lot of companies sort of created um their own versions and this is where we sort of see the spinoff and the creation of a civilian style survival kit slash seer kit type thing really because seer isn't in and of itself um is not necessarily a civilian uh civilian sort of program if you will and we we talk about this in part one so if you haven't already i forgot to mention check out part one and part two because that talks a lot about why we don't think necessary necessarily is it is a perfect fit for a civilian type setup but like i mentioned there are lots of survival kits on the market today and a lot of them include seer type components so that's where we sort of start to see the birth of this seer it's restraint escape style kits for the civilian sector now here's where they fall short a lot of these searches are based they are that they either have a plastic container or a metal like suma container like on the previous slide um they're they're going to have some kind of physical container all the little bits and bobs are put in this one container and that's your sear kit right well you know what if you know this is not really a sort of you know rabbit hole what if scenario this is a very likely scenario you're not going to have time to get to your kit if you're going to get you know snatched and grabbed off the street you're not going to have time to take those items out of your kit and layer them on your body somewhere you need to have that already pre-staged so we find that a lot of times people are going to go out there and they're going to spend you know 100 hundreds of dollars in some cases on these searches and they're just going to like put them in their pocket and go around like they're like they're perfectly fine they can escape any situation well that's not necessarily true um you know these seer kits are are great and it's better to have one than to not have one but let's be real when we're talking about the the adversaries we're going to be facing we're simply going to be you know grabbed off the street and we're not going to have chance to implement our escape plan right you know in the even worst case scenario uh what if you are uh you know taken and uh put in a a situation where there is no sort of westernized standard of human living right you know you're not going to have a lot of the tools you think you might have and you're going to have a lot more than you you know you didn't think you would have as well so the situation can be highly dependent on where you're at so like this image shows uh an isis prison in i believe syria at the time i think it was right there in the merv on the uh iraq syria border but uh the point is is that we sort of have a romanticized view a lot of times of what seer is going to look like and what a restraint escape situation is going to look like and it might not live up to your you know expectations so we need to to to take some considerations uh when it comes to actually the what the stuff we actually use you know is right so this is why we came up with this sort of system we have conventional survival kits right that are built for survival like solcoa is a company out there that's right at the cutting edge of if you're going to buy a pre-made survival kit you know soulcoa makes the best ones they're the ones who won the the solicitation for the original stuff and they've just been doing great stuff with all their civilian kits so if you buy one of their pre-made survival kits you'll be pretty you'll be sitting pretty right and then there's also dedicated sear kits that don't have quite so many survival components but they are dedicated for restraint escape and things like that well we wanted to kind of merge the two and and not necessarily create just one big kit that's both a survival kit and a sear kit we wanted to incorporate both sort of ideologies into the same thing uh the same system right we're not talking container based we're not talking like uh you know gear based we're talking a sort of survival escape system really is what was what we're looking at and that's how we're kind of approaching it so really um we're looking at not just one container but multiple containers like you know it's the layer throughout our body you know so that if we have you know all of these components together we'll be most prepared but if we can't necessarily take our survival kit with us but we can take our search kit we'll still be sort of okay you know we'll be able to make do and then we have a lot of specialized gear that not very many people are talking about when it comes to even seer kits a lot of people don't necessarily uh think about some of the things that we're going to talk about here in this which is probably going to be a very long video um but yeah that's why our main sort of system is we have a survival kit component um with with some seer tools in it so we have some bare bones stuff in it with that then we have a sort of seer capsule sort of mentality which has some survival tools in it as well so a little bit of each in each kit so that you can function both both ways and then we have sort of escape aids which are not in any container but they are layered on our person in various spots um you know concealed on our body somehow that we're and this is a daily thing so that we're not necessarily relying on the ability to layer these items uh from our circuit on our person you know if we get yanked out of bed in the middle of the night we'll still have stuff on us that's that that's the mentality with it and then finally of course the most important part by far is the knowledge part the knowledge part is most is the most important because not only is it the hardest to find but it's also the hardest to learn very few places and and and sort of government entities are going to talk about seer you know the seer courses that the military has are of course classified and even some of the tactics that are in those classes are classifieds and you know nobody can talk about them really a lot of the technology itself is classified as well so we don't exactly we're not exactly dealing with an open source um sort of system here you know we're not you the culture is not open source when it comes to seer even from seer from other countries like good luck finding any data whatsoever on russian seer courses and we know they exist um we know that you know from our professional atmosphere that they do exist we just you know in the civilian sector you're gonna you're not gonna find any information on them at all um so that's something to to consider is moving forward is that the knowledge part is the most important but it's also gonna be the most hard to find so when it comes to most seer kit contents you know like i said before we we don't necessarily think that seer is a good mentality from or seer as a concept isn't necessarily a good lens from which to view this in a civilian capacity it's not a perfect fit uh but the tools are so you're gonna see you can google you know buy search it or something like that and you're gonna find a bunch of different ones from a bunch of different companies and most of the time they're gonna have these four things inside them first of all you're going to have restraint escape tools next up you're going to have containment escape tools so once you get out of your hand restraints you're going to have to get out of your cell or container that you're in somehow and third up is barter slash trade components now a lot of times these this doesn't exist in a lot of commercial sear kits i can't think of any actually that have bartering tools in them but we'll talk about that in a minute and then lastly survival components things like ferro rods you know fire starters things like that you know those are are quite common to put in kits because they're quite cheap and very small to to put in there so that's what most sear kits have and it's kind of roughly the the categories from which we approach um the the sort of search it concept right so let's go through each of these categories and let's talk about some of the specific tools that we keep in our seer kit specifically now first up is restraint escape so handcuff keys like we mentioned before absolutely crucial there's two main kinds that we personally use there are many out there but these two are the are the really the two big ones for one on the left is the tiny inconspicuous handcuff key and the one on the right is the uh the delta key the one on the left uh the the tiny inconspicuous handcuff key really the only selling well there's two selling points for it one it has it has a clip on it and that allows it to be clipped into things like underwear t-shirts and the rolls of fabric all kinds of in your sock and you'll never know it that's a huge selling feature that not many handcuff keys have because the attachment point is really the crucial part you know you can have you know 50 different handcuff keys on you but if you have to sew them into your clothing every time that gets tedious and you're not going to do it unless you leave them permanently sewn in your clothes but then you have to buy an awful lot of handcuff keys whereas this one you could buy three or four of these and just clip them in your t-shirt clip them in your underwear as you go about the day and you know just continuously you know when you take your clothes off you know and change clothes just move the key over to this new set of garments and that works quite well and it's pretty cheap to do the other handcuff key is the delta key and for obvious reasons it's preferred in some areas because it works on a lot more cuffs than the than the plastic one however it's also metal now granted it is titanium so it is very metal detector resistant but it's not completely irresistible to metal detectors whereas a plastic key is so that's something to keep in mind we keep both we use one we have one or two of each in the little survival capsules that we use um but yeah it's just something to keep in mind is that if you're trying to go for a zero metal content that's you know the delta key is is kind of it's gonna have to go out and then uh another type of key which we have not seen anyone at all talk about is the um the the sort of uh and hua if that's how it's pronounced anhua cuffs from oscar oscar delta they met oscar delta is i believe a british company that makes these keys and these keys are the only ones on the market that work for the chinese police handcuffs now we had of course planned to show these handcuffs in you know part three but that's going to have to come later so we'll show you how these handcuffs work specifically but the short version is you can't use a normal american handcuff key on them you have to use this tube-like thing because the key is actually has to be a try hollow triangle shape now so these uh handcuffs are obviously the only thing on the market that work for these handcuffs so you're if you're in you know southeast asia most southeast asian nations use these handcuffs and a lot of middle eastern nations use these handcuffs as well and you cannot shim them the only way to get out of them is using this type of key now that being said you know oscar delta is is doing a great thing by offering this the only company that offers it so far but keep in mind is that their keys aren't quite perfect so if um as you can see here on this image the key on the left has been used one time and the key on the right in this image has been used not at all as you can see the one on the left is rounded out quite significantly and that's because the turning force the torque needed to to actually open these chinese police handcuffs is quite significant it is double or triple the amount of effort required to turn the key on an american style set of handcuffs and that's important because the key is made out of copper this uh delta uh you know oscar delta and hua key is made out of copper and it's basically a one time use tool and in some cases like these two keys here that i have that i'm showing you right now they didn't ever open the handcuffs so as you can see on the image on the right where the three keys there on the on the coin the one on the left we took a pair of pliers and bent it into more of a triangle shape and those work fine uh those work a lot better than you know just crimping it just a little bit into more of a triangle permanent triangle shape uh that works out quite well on these chinese police handcuffs so if you buy these and put them in your kit just recognize that you're going to have to do that because these keys as they come from oscar delta some of them work some of them don't some of them work flawlessly on certain chinese handcuffs but the as you know as we were going to talk about in the video on about these specific handcuffs their machining tolerances vary widely like some of these handcuffs like we have a pair of these handcuffs that the key that comes with the handcuffs cannot open like that's how bad these are manufactured and so if you're trying to cover the most tolerances the the most different kinds of of these chinese police handcuffs you're going to have to adapt your keys to do that so that's just kind of an aside you know we wanted to talk about this in a different video of course but that's going to come out a little bit later but yeah a a dedicated key for chinese police handcuffs is crucial if you spend a lot of time in those areas not so much a concern for america but these are used widely around the world and then up next is of course the um the the ubiquitous handcuff key shim now this is just an example one that we have sort of it's the key style handcuffed shim where it's got a little bit of a little bit of a grip to it and we bent it so that it can fit in a kit a little bit better you know you can buy these you can use these you can use the split paul kind of the russian kind depending on where you were taught um they uh those work as well actually those are the ones i use in my own personal kit but this is just an example of a handcuff shim or our hank of shims are quite crucial especially if you are you know sort of uh using up against a blue box type system it's really the only thing that's going to work you know you know if you can take advantage of the fact that nobody can you know double lock the cuffs right so uh take a look at um parts one and two for talking about more about shims but yeah shims go in the kit um also um extra kevlar cordage and i have this as an example a size reference next to this sort of crushed up dollar bill and kevlar cordage is a great escape tool now you can put this in your kit you can also sew it into your clothing very loosely so that you could just pull it out like i've got it on a couple of pairs of pants i've just got it you know wrapped around the inside of the waistband so that i can reach around behind and pull it out from inside the pants it's just like pulling a you know the thread loose on a sweater but instead of pulling the pants loose it pulls the kevlar cord out so that's a good way to do that as well if you didn't want to store it in the kit and then up next is something that not a whole lot of people well a lot of people talk about the normal ceramic razor blades but you can also buy ceramic razor blades are becoming very very commercially popular and this company called slice makes like holiday gift wrapping you know cutting tools and things like they're a craft company and they make a great escape innovation tool which is basically their version of an x-acto knife but it's all plastic now it must be noted that on the inside of where this razor blade is held in it's held in by a metal spring but you can you can pull that out quite easily and make this entirely plastic and this is great because a lot of people are used to buying these little six dollar ceramic razor blades with little hole in them and things like that and those are those are good there's work but why not have why not have a tool with a handle on it because a tool with a handle on it uh can fit inside the small survival capsule we're going to talk about in a minute and it it greatly greatly expands your capability so that's something to keep in mind and it can also function as an improvised improvised defensive tool if need be has a cap on it and things like that so that is a great tool to use if you're in if you're looking to get into it it's expensive it's quite expensive the razer blades are roughly double what uh normal razor blades normal ceramic razor blades cost um and i think the whole tool itself is like gosh i hate to quote a price on film that's going to change let's say you get anywhere from 15 to 30 bucks one of these um razor blade tool x-acto knife things and it comes with a couple of blades uh so depending on where you get it from so yeah that's that's something to to look into ceramic razor blades non-metallic absolutely uh crucial for a kit like this then up next are lock picks now these are the absolute smallest lock picks that i would consider using and these are the the bogota i think nano i think that's what they're called we have a few the minis the micros or whatever they're called and we have all different sizes of these bogotas they're expensive they're very expensive uh tools but they are titanium they're low they're they're not made of a ferrous metal which means they're harder harder to detect with a metal detector once again um and so yeah that's why they go in our kit because these are the smallest ones that we can use um physically right there are smaller ones out there smaller lock picks but they are made of steel which is you know quite magnetic and very easily detectable via a metal detector and they also don't quite have the capabilities these have so um you know this is about as small as we go with with the lock picks and they fit easily on the survival type capsule and then up next is something that not very many people talk about because it's kind of expensive is an escape saw now this particular escape saw i think we got from shomer tech but there's now a couple of different brands out there um and they we put the price here on the screen as 20 bucks because that's i think what the msrp is but we got this one for eight dollars um i can't remember from where i think it was shimmer tech but i'm not entirely certain and we got a few of these and this saw is like you you would you don't quite understand how sharp it is until you get it and i've never seen a saw like this before not even like a small like jeweler's little saw this kind of saw is amazing it will cut through everything so this saw is worth way more than its weight in gold and i would highly recommend getting one of these little escape saws like this and also it functions as a handcuff shim it's the right size to work as that and it's long so it will work on a lot of those uh handcuffs that like we showed before those rigid cuffs where it has a re you need a really long shim to get in there and bypass those locking poles this one will work it will work quite well in fact and the saw blade doesn't get in the way when it's used as a handcuff shim so this is one of those tools where it's like you're hesitant to buy it because it's like ah that's kind of expensive for such you know tiny little saw there's better saw blades out there right um but we pulled the trigger on it we bought it and we bought a few of these and they have been amazing i would not hesitate to buy uh quite a few more of these so that's the so you and this saw blade goes by a few different names [Music] but you can generally just google escape saw and you'll find it it's a very small little saw blade like that then up next are a couple of more you know more like containment escape tools like for padlocks so we've got a quick stick and an easy decoder once again they're bent to sort of fit the round container you can leave these in or you can take them out i personally don't rely on these i take them out because they're um they're steel spring steel and it i'm trying to get i personally my personal one is trying to be as as as have as little magnetic signature as possible and these really don't grant me a whole a whole heck of a lot of capability considering i have a saw blade i have you know lock picks themselves things like that i can get i can fashion a way to get through a padlock um without using this type of tool so put them in if you want i think a few guys have them in theirs here but yeah that's something to consider these are fairly common component in a lot of search kits and then up next is barter slash trade items now this is one where we kind of want to explain what we're talking about here because a lot of people get bent out of shape when it comes to talking barter goods now i will admit that bartering in a stereotype scenario is probably not a good idea it's not a super great thing um it usually most seer doctrine like anybody who's been through a normal seer course will tell you yeah bartering is it that went out of the window you know back in the 50s right we don't barter anymore we avoid civilians as much as possible and because usually a civilian population means we're going to get turned in you know the united states military learned that very well from vietnam and subsequent conflicts uh throughout the middle east is that basically yeah you're not going to have a population that is on your side this isn't world war ii anymore the world has changed quite significantly now that being said we also have to remember though that in the civilian sector we might have that option you know we are not you know like downed aviators you know where most seer courses are you know um meant to sort of portray we're civilians right we're in our own communities so bartering might be an option if nothing else we're talking about like bribing guards and things like that and that might be a better option and gold is very very small it's very lightweight if you keep a gram or two on you um and it it's relatively cheap for what you can get out of it see these little one gram bars are very very small you can see how they fit there but two of them fit on a quarter and you can fit these very easily pretty much anywhere and they have a lot of value so you can use them to easily trade you know the the uses for these are quite literally endless in a civilian sphere type scenario not so much useful in a conventional military sense but we do have to remember the origins right these did exist in the military sort of history right there were such things as barter kits as you can see here on the slide you know aviators throughout the pacific and in some parts of the european theaters mostly the pacific theaters as far as we know but comment below if you know where these were used more often these barter kits are sort of a lesser known part of history where they are a kit of of valuable things that could be used with a native population to help get a downed aviator to back to american friendly lines right so this one on the right here contains a very nice mechanical watch with a little watch band you know watches aren't typically that hugely valuable to you know westernized society but to you know a sort of pacific islander culture back in the 40s they you know a very you know um very tribal like culture a timepiece might have a lot more value than a gold coin would um you know likewise a lot of these you know small shiny baubles and things like that going back to the you know quasi-offensive you know era of of um you know colonists you know trading with you know native americans and things like that they weren't trading things that had particular value um to the to the you know the westerners but to the natives they had great value so things like that you know a little copper or uh you know so you know very low carrot uh gold um very ill-fitting uh pressed you know rings things like that might have great value and that's where sort of where we're coming from now in a modern day society we of course are going to use these little gram pieces little gram bars of gold because they're easier to carry and you know things like that but you know just keep in mind is it bartering while it has come out of the the doctrine for most of um you know american societies it might be willing to put in it might be worth putting in your circuit um just on your you know out of your own considerations so um to think about that is something to think about you don't have to do any of the stuff we're saying of course but it's you know a lot of people um put down bartering or a lot of people of course overestimate the power of borrowing like they're going to be able to walk up to a guard and say i'd like to be led out of jail please here's one one gram of gold like no it's not going to work like that but in a situation where you might have the opportunity to barter you want to have something to barter with so that's why we include gold now another barter tool that we use is uh diamonds now diamonds historically have been quite bad for currency they have very little resale value they they cannot be divided easily like gold can and they are very very uh different every single diamond is different which means that it basically checks all them uh you know checks all the boxes for not becoming a currency so diamonds are not a great shtf's currency it would not be a good idea just stockpile diamonds or anything like that now that being said we do include one diamond one little .23 carat diamond in these kits because as you see look how small it is it is so small and it cost us around 250 bucks to buy it from a certified american vendor now if you've ever been to a foreign country like afghanistan and you try to buy some of the jewelry that's you know on base or um you know come this stuff that comes through the kyber pass and stuff like that you can get non-certified almost certainly illegal diamonds for a lot cheaper and um that would probably be you know an option for some people if you're not too concerned about you know u.s laws you know if obviously if you're in the u.s you have to obey us laws and those kinds of diamonds are illegal but if you're in afghanistan if you're in a country that doesn't necessarily care about the diamond trade that might be an option for you and you can get it for a lot cheaper you buy a two carat diamond for like what 50 bucks or something like that you know off some kid in a foreign country and it'll be a perfectly fine you know perfectly fine diamond of course it's you know morally questionable but you know that's just how the diamond trade works in other countries but we might have a future video talking about that kind of stuff but yeah sorry we're going to leave it kind of vague for now but the point is is that diamonds can serve as a last currency and that's because a lot of like i mentioned a lot of terror groups use diamonds to finance their terrorism to this day even though they're not a good currency they don't necessarily have a whole lot of resale value they're very hard to tell what value they have um you'd need a very special you'd have to know what you're looking at to tell how valuable a diamond is and even then it you know it might mean something to some you could have two you know diamond uh you know you could have two jewelers look at the same diamond and give you a different price for it so that's not admit that's you know basically rules it out as a currency unless you're dealing with like a terror group or something so if you're held you know if you're held captive by a terror group or if you've you know you've gotta uh you know pay your way through you know a dirty guard or some kind of border checkpoint in a foreign nation which we may or may not have had to do many times in the past um diamonds work that ones work quite well so keeping one around you see how small it is it doesn't hurt anything it takes up no space in your kit and if you can do that you know it would not be a bad thing to do and then moving on to a more conventional barter thing you can just keep cash on you like um we have this uh um dollar bill here which is a 50 bill a 50 american dollar bill and then we also have a 50 euro note that we can cram up and uh shove in um our kit so that works out quite well um you can use you know spend money no matter where so euros obviously europe you're not going to find any place in the united states it takes euros but that's so that's why we have the american dollar bill and the american dollar bill functions in a lot of it works in most countries on earth i haven't i don't think i've ever been to a country that did not accept american dollars at some place now a lot of places of course within europe don't accept american dollars in the countries but you can always find some place that does i haven't been to anywhere where you have to use america you have to use the local currency with the exception of places like war zones where um the local population does not want to get caught with american currency because um that mean that they might get labeled as a collaborator with americans right so like in a lot of places in you know iraq and syria you're not going to find you're going to find that the locals don't want to take american cash they want to take their local currency or something else in trade because they don't want to get caught with the american dollar bills at least that's the way it was a you know a few years ago but yeah keeping cash on you in your little survival cat capsule is very very important then up next is sort of the sort of survival components and the first one up is this little thumbtack compass compasses like this are quite amazing i think the very first uh first time that we heard about this was a little nato 40 millimeter compass a little dry cell compass that i think they're still made nowadays but they work quite well these are i think thumbtack they're labeled as thumbtack compasses from county comm it's the only place i've been able to find them but they are very very small as you can see by how small it is compared to that quarter and they fit very well inside the lid of the survival capsules or uh if you don't want to glue them to the inside of the lid uh you can just stick them in there they also fit very well in little you know pico containers as we'll talk about in a minute um but yeah these these compasses work quite well i will note though that somehow or another we've got like i don't know 15 or 20 of these laying around and so at some point in time uh they become demagnetized now some of this only happens with a with a couple of the ones we have like they they no longer point north and i don't know how or why but it's just kind of a reminder that if you're dealing with something this small and it's a dry cell you might want to might want to keep checking it every now and then to make sure that it actually does in fact point north and you haven't de-magnetized it in some way because the needle is so small um and you know so yeah that's something to keep in mind and then up next this is something that we know we don't really see a whole lot of people talking about but water treatment tablets in a survival capsule um and this is something that you like our personal experience sort of came out and i'll show you an image and this image was from nepal when we were there a while ago and this image is taken from about 300 kilometers from the nearest town so this road is the only part of the road that goes through this part of the country it's down um a little bit further south than uh kathmandu uh the main the capital there and it's in the middle of nowhere um quite literally there is nothing uh except for this road um there's no humans there's no villages there's there's nothing in this particular part of the country for you know a couple hundred kilometers around and there's garbage everywhere there is trash everywhere you would be surprised um at how much garbage is in places around the world that like where no humans should be or go like i remember going to um going to indonesia and just going to the beaches there and just walking the beaches and you cannot take a single step without stepping on some plastic garbage so suffice it to say the world today in is polluted it's polluted as heck and it is not a um place that i want to drink water from you know this is not the kind of thing where you can go back and um look at you know survival guides and survival manuals from like 50 years ago and say like oh you know you can drink water that's clean coming out of a mountain or things like that you know that's really it's really going to be hard to find a spot of water on planet earth that has not been contaminated by human beings even in some of the most remote areas on the planet so that's why we want to carry water treatment because water treatment tablets can prevent you from getting very very sick and if you're on the run and you get some kind of thing like giardia or you know crypto or something like that uh you could quite literally be dead within a couple of days um if nothing else you're gonna be sapped of all energy uh within within 24 hours and that's not good and if you're in some kind of you know escape and evasion scenario right so that's why we talk about water treatment tablets and we keep them on us no matter what now these are the um uh potable aqua tablets no they're the mic they cated in micro pure tablets there are some other ones called from israel card called uh tahar mayem i think is how you say it you'll notice the packaging has you know hebrew lettering all over it when you google like water purification tablets they are a lot smaller and they might fit in these survival caps a little bit more but these were micro pure tablets that we had um and we just you know shoved them in there because it took up a little bit extra space and prevented the the kit from rattling so much so that that's why we have those in our kit all right and up next is something that i don't i haven't seen anybody talk about at all and this is a micro sd card now this is one of those things where we're gonna have to be kind of cryptic again about why we have it um but we we always all of us here um separately and independently carry a micro sd card and you know sometimes multiple ones um and on that micro sd card we have three partitions so the first partition is unencrypted it is just a normal you plug it into a usb adapter plug it into a computer you can read it normally and that thing in that that partition has our identity documents you know scans of passports drivers licenses things like that visas you know entry paperwork um [Music] if you're traveling in a country that requires it a lot of times you know vaccine paperwork things like that medical records if you know if we get injured and you know we're unconscious somebody finds this you know capsule on our person they plug in this micro sd card they can get our medical records and things like that if they need them um we also have on their sort of information arc you know like we've mentioned before um sort of like a you know like a noah's ark of information you know information that's likely to be banned so a couple hundred survival manuals you know all kinds of things that are likely to not be available in a lot of places so we keep that you know on the unencrypted part because so it's easier to get to so on part two i'm afraid we're gonna have to be you know even more cryptic about that um part two is gonna also be encrypted and it is going to have a negotiating tool a small bit of information that we can give people the password to we could tell them the password to allow them to install the encryption software and decrypt partition 2 and that can serve to verify our identity if we needed to we don't want that unencrypted because we want people to have to interact with us at some point in time so so we get picked up for something and we need to verify our authenticity but we can't we don't want to have it on an unencrypted drive we could physically tell our captors slash interrogators right okay open partition 2 on the hard drive here's the password for it that should verify our identity or it could be used to barter so we could say hey this is the information we have if you want to talk about negotiating for our freedom we can do that too and then partition three is essentially our insurance policy it is um another partition where we can have a whole host of information that might be valuable to any government agency on earth and um if you know part two partition two can serve to verify the authenticity and verify who we are verify that we do have the access to the information that we do have and part three is the um is the full on sort of information that can be used to ensure our freedom or if nothing else it can be used to um ensure our our authenticity right so uh that's that's sort of what we keep on the micro sd cards hopefully people out there who are in the know who might need this sort of setup will recognize what we're talking about because every analyst out there has an insurance policy once you've seen enough stuff out there to make sure that you you know a lot of times intel analysts and people not necessarily analysts this is more of an ops thing but people who get involved in special programs or things like that oftentimes realize that in order to make it home in one piece they need some kind of insurance policy to make sure that their government comes and gets them and doesn't just leave you know drop them like third period french right so you know incidents have happened over time and um you know i'm just going to leave it at that so microsd cards uh are very um very very important especially when it comes to information and then sort of along those lines is a more thing that we can talk a little bit more freely about is is a blood now this is something that is more of a governance and government thing only but you can make your own and essentially a bloodshed you can read about it on your own it's fascinating to read the history of these but essentially what it is is a document it's a document that has one statement on it or a series of statements and it is written in most languages on earth most common languages certainly the language is in a specific area so if you're operating in say like southeast asia every language spoken in southeast asia will be on this bloodshed and essentially it's a document that says hey i'm an american i'm in trouble uh if you help me if you help me my government will pay you a certain dollar amount and um yeah hell you know help me get back here take this take you know rip off a corner of the document that's your receipt essentially that you helped me and you can go to the embassy and claim your reward right um these were very popular in world war ii they came out they arose actually out of the very first bloodshed i believe was uh from a balloonist in france from like the 17th century or 18th century or something like that don't quote me on that but this go this concept of a bloodshed goes back hundreds of years quite a long way really to the very first time you know the very first air travel with balloons is how far back they go and they're still used today although nowadays they look more like this this is what bloodsheds look like in today's modern military they're mostly the same piece of paper you know durable tyvek paper um but they are uh put in belts um so they call they're called blood belts nowadays now of course we can't show what one like looks like for real because you know there aren't any pictures of that on the internet and they are heavily serialized um so you you sign these out these are controlled items you sign these out just in the military when you're issued one you sign these out just like you signed up for night vision goggles or weapon uh catalog because it has currency value each corner of that document is worth ten thousand dollars i think is the going rate um so if that gets into the wrong hands you could potentially be paying terrorists up to forty thousand dollars of hard american dollars no questions asked so that's why these are kind of a sort of a not really a taboo item to talk about it's just nobody really knows about them so if you wanted to make your own um you can i would advise doing this actually it'd be quite good quite good to have you know put it on some type of paper print it out on some really durable you know paper right in the ring pipe or something like that and you just keep it around um because that's a really good part of a survival kit you know so it's a sort of bloodshed now obviously you can't really make one that is you know valuable you know uh has value to it like you know tear this corner off and it's worth ten thousand dollars that would be kind of not really doable but you can write on a piece of paper in a bunch of different languages as you know a phrase like please help me get back to the nearest you know american embassy or something like that and that would be good you know that's what we do a lot of times um so yeah bloodsheds are very very useful and then so the next concept is switching gears quite quite radically here um this is the next concept that we wanted to talk about because it has more of a pop culture reference than anything and uh so this is also by the way the part where you know we're going to be talking about some kind of adult topics so if you've got you know kids around listening to this you might want to hit pause for a second or skip past it um not to say you know we're you know going to get particularly vulgar it's just you know this type of stuff is not quite pleasant or for mixed company and this is the idea of the plan d evasion plan of you know evasion or plan simply and this comes from a movie because people remember movies more than they remember us classified documents right this comes from a movie called papillon steve mcqueen movie from you know way back in the day oh really good movie they did a remake of it here recently but the original is of course always always better but there's one particular scene right at the beginning of the movie where steve mcqueen's character is he's got this little capsule in his hand and for those of you who don't know you know without spoiling the content of the movie the movie is about a guy who is sent to um devil's island um and he is basically the worst prison in the world and for a crime he didn't commit of course right and it's it's about documenting his journey to escape and things like that so that's the plot of the movie if you haven't seen it before but suffice it to say very harsh conditions right and the only possessions he has in his possession are in this little capsule and the movie sort of explains it to try to explain to a civilian uh audience what is exactly going on because it's a key part of the movie and um steve mcqueen his character is kind of an expositional moment within the movie he's being observed by a fellow inmate and a hammock on board the the transport ship and he's observed um putting money in this little survival capsule right and he and he remarks you know as he's putting the money into the capsule um he makes our mark of you know oh you know the things we have to do you know for survival you know i'm shoving things up one's uh rear end right so it's a sort of rectal capsule um that he keeps money in and as most people know this is very much a thing in u.s prisons today so um skipping out of the fantasy land because we don't want to ever do anything survival related you know based on a movie right this actually is a real thing in fact this is an example a 3d model of a of the oss the office of strategic services developed this what they quite literally called a rectal tool kit and it is a metal capsule that has all bunch of these little tools and stuff in it for escaping and evading and a little handle for all these tools as well and uh it's quite big if you look at the look at how big the capsule is it's quite significantly quite quite large in fact much larger than i think anyone would would want to put it delicately but it's also press fit together there's no threads in it at all it's press fit together and it's meant to you know go right up inside a person and uh for retrieval later so that you could pass a strip search and so that if you're in captivity you could still have access to some tools now the uh the the british our friends from across the pond are not to be outdone they have their own version as well this is a more more modern version from our friends over at mi6 they created one as well and this is the only photo we could find of one and it is we don't know how big it is um but as you can see the knurled surface there has got to be sort of painful um you know going in and coming out from its hiding place um but yeah so this is a this is a real thing this is not something that that's just you know in movies or whatnot and then we also have to remember the prison example everyone knows about the you know the old um to put it crudely the prison pocket right that everybody uh knows about so this is the modern day version this is a very mysterious product that appeared on schumer tech's website a few years ago and it's um it has a quite obvious usage now as you can see one is quite tapered there's no hard surfaces anywhere on it there's no you know jagged surfaces and it looks like it has one very specific use now the shimmer tech capsule is very very interesting because it sort of unscrews in the middle right there it has an o-ring on it so it's waterproof um so the contents inside don't get soiled and sometimes you'll find these being sold with a packet of lubricating jelly right there so there's really only one one possible usage for this capsule and the capsule itself is interesting because it's made out of magnesium some additive normal metal it's made out of magnesium so that if you had a ceramic razor blade on the inside of that capsule you could shave the capsule itself is a fire starting tool which is interesting um it's a great concept there are a few you know a few cons to it though um but yeah the shimmer tech capsule is quite interesting now one thing that we we must talk about is uh this is the you know like i mentioned the the very crude term the you know prison pocket right um this is something that modern day corrections is very much prepared for people have been shoving things you know up the rear end for quite literally forever as long as prisons have been around so they've gotten quite good at detecting that sort of stuff now this is where you know sort of non-magnetic stuff comes into this is the boss too this is what most county what pretty much every christmas department in the world or at least in the united states in europe they have these and these are designed to detect all kinds of metal inside a person ri