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.

//The Wire//2300Z February 21, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: COUNTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION OPERATIONS CONTINUE AMID PERSONNEL CHANGES. IED DETONATES NEAR POLICE HQ IN MEXICO.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Mexico: Overnight an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was detonated outside a convenience store in Acapulco, Guerrero. Two fatalities were reported as a result of the blast, which were two bystanders passing by the location on a moped at the time of the detonation. AC: The attack appears to have targeted the local police headquarters just south of the convenience store, across the street. Considering it's close proximity to the parking area for police vehicles, it's very likely that the IED was targeting police officers who may frequent that convenience store. United Kingdom: Apple has halted their Advanced Data Protection feature for iCloud storage services. This follows an alleged secret mandate by the British government to install backdoor access that authorities would be able to use to access user's data without a court order at any time. Apple refused to implement this requested feature, and as a result has removed the feature from being accessed by those in Britain. Germany: This evening a stabbing attack was reported in the vicinity of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. The assailant was detained at the scene and the victim was hospitalized with non-life threatening wounds. AC: Due to long-standing German policy and culture, details regarding this incident will be hard to come by. As such, there's very little to go on for determining what happened. Some media sources claim multiple people were wounded, other sources claim only one. The location of the incident taking place in or around the Holocaust memorial is really the only detail that has been made public, though this area is a large outdoor venue near major streets, so correlating the site to the attack isn't definitive without additional details. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - This morning various media groups announced that the Department of Justice announced an investigation into UnitedHealth Group. This investigation pertains to the Group's allegedly illegal practices pertaining to fraudulent Medicaid billing. AC: A few hours after mainstream media broke this story, UnitedHealth Group denounced the reporting, calling it "misinformation". As of right now, there has not been any statement directly from the DoJ confirming this investigation, so there's no way to independently verify a leak made directly to mainstream media. Texas: Deportation operations continue as before, while corporate efforts to dig-in begin to materialize. Recently unsealed court documents indicate that the DoJ prosecuted the owners of a bakery a few weeks ago, allegedly for harboring illegal aliens in violation of 8 USC § 1324. This indictment comes after the arrest of three restaurant chain owners in Arizona, who were charged with harboring aliens back in January. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: While the prosecution of American citizens harboring illegal aliens is by no means a new concept, this practice has been comparatively rare over the past few decades. Most charges of harboring aliens arose from other situations (such as tax evasion or murder) with the harboring aliens charges being tacked on to supplement the prosecution of other crimes. This recent case in Texas is an oddity in that regard, as these charges seem to be independent of other crimes. ICE conducted a raid at the bakery and arrested a few staff members. Recent court docs confirm that two of those illegals turned witness against the owners by signing affidavits attesting that the owners of the bakery knew they were illegal, employed them anyway, and actively took steps to harbor them from deportation. As such, this recent case in Texas could signal a trend developing to widen the scope of illegal immigration investigations. For context, during President Trump's first term, only 11 employers were arrested for harboring aliens in 2019. An additional detail that is pertinent to the impending widening scope of investigations is that the White House fired the acting Director of ICE this afternoon, allegedly due to the numbers of daily deportations being less than expected. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z March 19, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: JUDICIAL ACTIVISM CONTINUES IN WASHINGTON. JFK DOCUMENT RELEASE CONTINUES. UNREST IN TURKEY FOLLOWING ARREST OF POLITICAL OPPOSITION.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Middle East: The various wars continue as before. American bombing continues in Yemen, Israeli bombing continues in Gaza. Turkey: Significant developments on the political front have resulted in economic turmoil. Over the weekend Turkish forces arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul. Imamoglu was Erdogan's primary political opponent and was expected to be named as the official candidate running against Erdogan in the upcoming election. Around one hundred other political opponents of varying levels of importance were also arrested. AC: How this will work out is anyone's guess, though this is hardly a surprising development for Turkish politics. Despite Turkey being a NATO member, these types of electoral shenanigans happen rather blatantly every few years, and often result in an economic downturn due to the instability of the situation. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Many highly controversial and politically unsavory actions continue among the judiciary. Yesterday another D.C. District judge seems to have banned Executive Order 14183, which prevents mentally unwell individuals from serving in the military (such as transgender individuals). AC: It would seem as though the era of more openly weaponizing the judiciary for political purposes has become a main vector for opposing President Trump's policies. No judge has the authority to dictate what the Commander in Chief can do with the US Armed Forces, full stop. Likewise, no judge has the authority to allow illegals to remain in the United States illegally, as that power was explicitly not grated to the judiciary by the Constitution. Nevertheless, these efforts continue tiresomely, and are leading to an erosion of the entire judicial branch of government...for which the judiciary themselves are solely to blame. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Following the release of the JFK files last night, multiple details must be noted as newcomers to the investigation begin to observe some things for the first time. Not only is a grand case of expectation management called for, but many people in our modern time make the assumption that the initial investigation into the JFK assassination simply wasn't conducted, or that the people investigating at the time were completely clueless as to what happened. This is not so; many exceptionally damning details of the investigation have been public since the very early years. There is no one report that will state "X did it" with any trustworthiness, however there are a LOT of one-off random documents and details that very strongly indicate that this wasn't just a simple assassination. By digging into these "new" documents, a lot of people are figuring out why the JFK assassination is so famously suspicious. Now, instead of someone thinking "those JFK conspiracy theorists are stupid", a fresh focus on the old documents from that time may persuade someone to think "hey that conspiracy dude actually has a point, this is really sketchy". As of right now, that's probably the most to come out of these documents. Almost all of the documents that have been released so far have already *been* released. As such, many exceptionally interesting documents have been found in the latest release that have long been in the public eye, for anyone who wanted them. This is going to result in a lot of social media pages touting "new" documents implicating this person, or that group...documents which have been public since the early days. Another detail to remember is that, while alternative media is often preferable to mainstream media, this does not automatically make everyone with a Twitter account a highly trained investigative journalist. For instance, one document circulated social media immediately after the docs were released. This document focused on Gary Underhill, and that he was afraid for his life because of his knowledge of CIA assassination teams. However, this document is NOT official testimony or any kind of "smoking gun" whatsoever. Reading is hard for some, so whoever first posted this document clearly did not read it. The subject and header of this Secret memo clearly state that this is an excerpt from Ramparts magazine, which was included for the record. This specific document buried in the JFK files does not confirm anything, it's merely a copy of something that was written in a public magazine, that investigators might want to make a note of. But overall this secret report did not confirm the actual information contained within the article, as implied (or openly stated) by many social media accounts. Same story with the pages that "implicate" Joe Biden. These documents aren't really a smoking gun either, and while very interesting, they have been in the public eye since the late 1960's. Consequently, many of the documents that have been released are simply interviews...a person's testimony. While helpful for investigative work, it's not a definitive picture, nor is it the truth in some cases. Most rather interesting documents have remained redacted, poorly scanned to the point of not being legible, or incomplete. Perhaps the only thing of note that has originated from the JFK file disclosure is that many documents openly state that the CIA would prefer to redact all references to the Israeli Intelligence Service. This is once again not surprising in the slightest, but a fairly common point of focus for those new to the JFK investigation. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z October 30, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WAR CONTINUES IN LEBANON AS TENSIONS REMAIN HIGH. UNREST UNDERWAY IN TANZANIA. AIRSTRIKES CONTINUE IN CARIBBEAN. WHITE HOUSE PLANS TO INCREASE NUCLEAR TESTING FOLLOWING RUSSIA'S INTENSIFICATION OF SIMILAR EFFORTS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Middle East: Overnight Israeli targeting in Lebanon continued with new strikes in the southern regions of the country. This comes after a few days of airstrikes and rising tensions in Lebanon. Analyst Comment: Details are sketchy on all sides, however a series of events have transpired over the past few days that have deteriorated relations. On Sunday, French troops stationed in Lebanon as part of the UN observation mission shot down an Israeli drone that was harassing their position. In response to that, a different drone approached the French position and dropped a grenade near them. An Israeli tank also fired a round that landed near the French observation post, continuing a long-standing tradition in the region (The IDF will frequently shoot near an international power that they don't like, they have hit a few observation posts with tank rounds before). In addition to this, IDF bombings adjacent to UN locations in Lebanon have continued to send the message, but mostly have just increased tensions in Lebanon once again and served as a reminder that the relationship between Israel and France is not particularly great. Tanzania: A state of civil unrest is underway nationwide following the deterioration of protests over the past few days, most of which have been prompted by recent election woes. The incumbent President excluded her main political rivals from the ballot, which prompted protests and demonstrations. These efforts have now become more widespread, and around a dozen fatalities have been reported so far during the riots. Caribbean: Yesterday evening the Pentagon announced another strike in the region, which resulted in the sinking of one more narco-vessel in the Pacific. 4x KIA were reported as a result of the strike. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Much rhetoric has abounded following various developments in the field of nuclear weapons. Earlier this week, Russia publicly announced the successful test of their latest nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable torpedo system, which has been a class of weapons in development since the 1980's. This latest version, dubbed the "Poseidon" in the open source world, is the latest version to be publicly and successfully tested. This in turn produced much fanfare surrounding these tests, and President Trump has stated that the US intends to increase nuclear testing over the next few months; because other nations have increased their efforts, so will the United States. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Regarding this recent rhetoric, there appears to be a "lost in translation" factor to what has been said by world leaders so far. Russia, for instance, has not stated that they intend to carry out testing of actual atomic weapons themselves. The last time Russia conducted a test of the detonation of a nuclear warhead was in 1990. China similarly conducted an underground nuclear test a little more recently, back in 1996. Russia in particular also has a slightly different "nuclear triad" than the United States. The US has bombers, submarine launched missiles, and static missile silos, all of which form the main methods for the deployment of nuclear weapons (thus the three legs of the "triad"). Russia has a different, more diverse view of nuclear deterrence. They have bombers (same as us), submarine launched missiles (again, same as us), some static silos, a lot of mobile launchers to include some train-based options, and now entering more widespread operational use, nuclear torpedos to supplement their very substantial submarine force. While it may seem new to some, many of the main weapons systems that they have been working on for a long time are nuclear-powered torpedos, that also carry nuclear warheads. The United States does not use these platforms, so when politicians talk about them there's a good chance that there's going to be a bit of misunderstanding. In his address, Putin talked a lot about this "nuclear torpedo", using that term to describe the test. However, Putin was referring to the torpedo being nuclear *powered* during this test...Russia did not actually detonate a nuclear warhead, this was merely a *public* test of the torpedo featuring the developments Russia has made in miniaturizing the mini nuclear reactor powering the torpedo. The fact that the torpedo is also intended to carry a nuclear warhead as it's payload, also plays in to using the word "nuclear" in discussions of this device. There are also quite literal translation challenges; in the Russian language, it's very common for defense officials and military service members in Russia to use the word "nuclear" to describe the idea of just a "really big bomb" and not exclusively an atomic device that causes mass destruction due to the fission of radioactive materials. Usually more high-ranking officials are careful to avoid this challenge of the language barrier, but it must be mentioned anyway because of the media coverage of this growing situation, which often relies on using the word "nuclear" as many times as humanly possible in an article. All of this is important to understand in the context of President Trump's recent comments because there are many world-changing possibilities that could result from the slightest remark. Despite the cliche, words do indeed matter, and so far nobody is really sure what Trump actually meant. Because depending on what he was trying to say, very different courses of action might be on the menu. When President Trump stated that the US is going to do more "nuclear testing" because "other nations do it", this might demonstrate a lack of understanding of Russia's weapons. He may think that Russia detonated a nuclear device because none of the analysts preparing his briefing made the details of Russia's test abundantly clear. He would have been made aware of the Poseidon test in his daily intelligence briefing, but it's possible that he only remembered the word "nuclear" and not the bit about it being really just a test of the mini reactor. The fact that NATO probably doesn't call this torpedo the Poseidon (but likely a different secret name) doesn't help much either. These are the intricate, behind-the-scenes considerations for briefing the President on such topics. As such, this is the most likely scenario, and it wouldn't be the first time that such a misunderstanding has happened. While this is hinging on a lot of speculation, it's important to think about because of the alternative theory: The official White House position (reinforced by the White House, not just Trump's possibly erroneous comment) is that Russia and China have ramped up their nuclear testing, so we are going to do the same...the only problem is that neither actually have ramped up their nuclear testing. Both have intensified their testing of various missile systems (along with the US), but not detonation testing. So either this is a mistake/skewing of words, or Russia and China have been blowing up nukes in secret (a possibility which at the moment seems unlikely). Another more likely theory is that President Trump (and the subsequent statements from the White House) were just referring to a general increase in the scientific development of nuclear devices, but not specifically the detonation of a warhead. There are plenty of technologies the US can test besides just the regular ICBM launch, so it's possible that's what the US intends to do: More readiness testing, more communications exercises, and more rapid deployment drills (like the one conducted yesterday in Texas). No matter the case, the White House's position remains rather uncertain; it's not clear as to if he means actual detonations of nuclear warheads, or the test of a weapons platform intended to carry the warhead, such as missiles or some other similar delivery vehicle. Most pundits and think tanks have been scratching their heads over this one as well, though most of which are heavily involved in politics themselves so there's incentive to just oppose Trump for the sake of it. However just going by what Trump and the White House have stated so far, it certainly seems like Trump meant testing the detonation of nuclear warheads, and not just the platforms that carry them, which is a whole other ball game. If this is what the United States intends to do, this would be a lot more substantial than Russia publicly testing a fancy, not-really-that-new torpedo. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for June 14th through the 20th, 2026. It's been quite a busy roller coaster of a week, so let's get right to it. Of course, the main focus this week has been the signing of the memorandum of understanding to start the process for ending the war in the Middle East. Are we getting back to normal? Is this insanity over? Well, not quite, because the subsequent and immediate escalation of the war in Lebanon, while the least surprising development in human history, still has complicated the situation and as of this morning, the fighting in Lebanon continues as the IDF remains on the offensive. Over in the first world, there have been several developments to be aware of throughout Europe and also here in the homeland. In the United Kingdom, barely an hour has passed without a ground-breaking and horrific story coming to light and in the United States, the domestic threats at the national level are elevated due to events in the Middle East, but we'll get to that in just a moment. In the United Kingdom this week, our friends across the pond have been dealing with quite a lot. In Northern Ireland, the unrest has continued with limited riots popping up randomly in Belfast over the past week. More peaceful protests have also taken place fairly regularly throughout the city, even though media coverage has been fairly minimal. Overall in the mainland proper, the bombshell news this week has been the release of the rape gang inquiry report, the privately funded effort to use parliamentary access to investigate the official documents on the rape gang crisis in the United Kingdom. If you are so inclined, you can read the report yourself. I will link to it below, but I will sharply warn you that it will probably be the worst thing you have ever read in your life, full stop. I myself have spent a couple of years coming through the Epstein files to find actionable intelligence and the absolute worst things in the Epstein file are not as bad as the least bad survivor testimony in this report. It is that bad. 250,000 British girls were raped and tortured over the past few decades with the assistance of government who not just covered it up, but actively directed and organized the rape gangs themselves. Since most of the victims had dozens, if not hundreds of perpetrators, we're looking at potentially millions of people that need to be handled. You can look at the appendix and look at the sourcing materials where all of these references are made and they are backed up with other sources. A lot of the testimony in the report is actually from people who are remaining hidden due to the British government prosecuting people who come forward as a victim. So you come forward as a victim, say "Hey, I'm a victim of a rape gang." And guess what? You get thrown in prison. So they're trying to cover it up because the people running the rape gangs are still in power. For us here in the US, if you have the stomach for it, the parts of the report that are not just a record of the atrocity are quite informative because a good chunk of the report details how and why this came to be, and the appendix is handy for name-dropping the entities that were involved in the scandal. Now, I would expect much more detail to come to light now that the true scale of this crisis is known. I would be willing to bet that a lot more people are going to come forward and a lot of whistleblowers are probably going to come forward as well who know exactly where the documents are stored. So there's probably going to be quite a few more reports written. And it's going to be important for us Americans to understand our connection to all of this as well. There is absolutely zero way that a scandal this big is just confined to the United Kingdom when the US and the UK are so heavily intertwined on pretty much everything including culture, banking, powerful people, all of that stuff. That is something to be aware of, right? We are very heavily intertwined with the UK and when they have something this damning coming out of their country, it does affect us as well because it's we're probably implicated in it somehow. In this case, most of the scandal in the UK is confined to mostly enclaves of multiple generations of migrants. And the report specifically states that up to 95% of the perpetrators were Pakistani. Here in the US, we have similar problems, albeit with our own national flavor. So over the next few weeks, it will be important to keep these issues at the forefront of memory because these kinds of issues are what undermines civilization itself. When we allow crimes of this scale into our society, it makes everything worse and erodes away at our very being. Witnessing how the British handle this over the next few years will be helpful for us because if we can't protect the innocent from foreign invaders from within our own borders, then what's the point of having a nation-state anyway? It may sound harsh, but deportation is really in the best interest of these people because everyone who reads this report will no longer be in favor of mass deportations, if you know what I mean. So, it would be wise for those engaging in this behavior to depart the United Kingdom and the United States while you still can. Here on the home front, there have been a few items of note this week, which I have not had much time to dig into. The most substantial of which is the alleged plot to target the UFC event on the White House lawn last weekend. According to the criminal complaint released by the DOJ, this was an effort by five men to use drones and explosives to target the UFC event at the White House, which would prompt an evacuation of the venue, and the would-be terrorists would conduct sniper attacks on the crowd leaving the White House grounds. These individuals were arrested before they were able to carry out their plans, and the FBI announced their great success early this week. Now, the headlines make this seem like a pretty substantial attack, but digging into the details as provided again by the DOJ, it becomes clear that these guys were not exactly playing with a full deck. For one, what happens every single time that an attack takes place at the White House? They lock down. Nobody in or out. This literally happens at least once a month, and these idiots apparently did not know about the very public security measures at the White House. If they had carried out their plan, nobody would be evacuated from the White House grounds, they would have all stayed inside, and the attack would never happened. This is very easy for anyone to see. There was literally a shooting at the White House like a couple weeks ago, and that's exactly what happened. So, I don't know why these idiots didn't know that, but anyway, just to cut right to the chase, ever since I saw the evidence photos of the gear that these guys were alleged to have staged for the attack, my gut assessment was that this was either a bunch of idiots, feds, or both. I mean, even Trantifa does not have so little self-respect that they would conduct a sniper attack with a bullpup shotgun. I mean, come on, guys. This entire plan was so hairbrained that it's honestly laughable. They had planned to conduct a sniper attack from what looks like the Jefferson Memorial, which is hilarious because you can't see the White House from that side of the Tidal Basin. And even so, the area that they had circled on their map was about a mile and a half from the White House. So, these guys were completely inept. But anyway, the grand question remains, how close did they get? After all, an idiot with a rifle can still cause a lot of trouble. So, even if they actually got to DC and found out that all of their plans would not work, they could still have shot somebody. The details that the DOJ released do not indicate whether or not these guys actually traveled to Washington. They were supposed to rendezvous in Fredericksburg, but it sounds like they never made it. It looks like all of them were scattered around the country and they were picked up by the local FBI field offices. So, I don't know if these guys actually planned to travel around at all. It could have been a case of five guys having this story of, "Oh man, I wish I could make it, but I can't." and canceling all on each other at the last minute. I don't know, but the plot was actually discovered because the mother of one of the suspects found out about the plot and turned her son in. So, all in all, I don't know about this one. It's not out of the question for this to be a legitimate attempt, and the evidence provided by the DOJ indicates that the would-be assassins did indeed try to plan the attack. They planned something, even if the average paintball game is much more well thought out. Maybe it was a real thing, maybe it was just an average Redditor on the internet being edgy. I don't know. More generally, though, right now is probably one of the most risky times for domestic terror attacks for one exclusive reason: the events in the Middle East. And let me explain by recapping what has happened so far over the past few days. As we all know, 2 days ago, the memorandum of understanding was signed by both Iran and the United States going into effect immediately to solidify the ceasefire as official, but also to set in motion the planning efforts to work out the details of a more permanent peace deal. The MOU has been published to much outrage all around because even though it's written rather vaguely, the vast majority of the points favor the Iranians very heavily. Immediately after this was signed, the Israelis expanded their bombing campaign in Lebanon, and several armored columns of the IDF have continued their advance along the eastern front to push north and west deeper into Lebanon. Hezbollah has, of course, responded in kind, mostly with anti-tank guided missile, or ATGM, attacks, which are their favored targeting method in this particular region, although FPV drone attacks are starting to become more popular, as well. Yesterday morning, the Qataris announced that they had succeeded in talking the Israelis and Hezbollah into a ceasefire that was to uh take place at 4:00 p.m. local time yesterday, but of course, the Israelis just ignored that and kept shooting. As a brief aside, this is why when we say it's an Israeli-style ceasefire, that's only partially a joke, right? They literally do not believe in the concept of a ceasefire. The Israeli Channel 12 news station literally said that a ceasefire does not mean to cease firing, it means just no major advances or offensive pushes. So, to the Israelis, it's really a foreign concept because they operate on a different set of norms and mores than the rest of the world. They treat themselves differently than everyone else, to include in warfare, especially in warfare. Anyway, cut to this morning uh when the large-scale bombing of Lebanon continued. Bombs have been going off for at least 24 hours now in Lebanon, and they've been uh they've been cratering quite a lot in southern Lebanon between the Litani River and all the way up to Beirut. I'm seeing some reports of munitions hitting uh maybe that far up in some of the suburbs, but still trying to pinpoint where all these bombs are landing, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty big bombing campaign. Now, of course, uh this morning, as I am recording this right now, I see on my screen that the Iranians have announced that they have closed the Strait of Hormuz due to the United States failing to constrain Israel, which is a direct violation of paragraph one of the MOU. Maybe there's a reason why Lebanon is literally the first thing in the MOU because it's the most important thing, and it's the thing that's going to get violated probably the soonest. Well, that's exactly what's happened. Again, this is a developing story right now, so the things are probably going to change by the time I edit this and get it out the door, but this appears to be what's happening right now. The strait may or may not be closed. It's going to probably take if the Israelis keep bombing and the Iranians want to close the strait because of that, it may take several hours, may take a full day for traffic to stop transiting through the strait. I don't think the Iranians are going to hit all the vessels that are currently in the strait right now. They may, I don't know, but right now there's a few dozen ships that are trying to move as fast as they can through the waterway. So, I don't know. They're trying to apply diplomatic pressure and we'll have to see how it works out tonight, but very busy day. Things are moving pretty fast, too fast for me to cover them and then have it out the door pretty quickly. So, that's the more tactical situation as it stands right now at this snapshot in time, but at the more strategic level, there are always more complicated details to be aware of. I myself have had a rather foreboding feeling about this whole thing as it comes to a close and this week has kind of reminded us of how high the stakes are in Washington when it comes to an agreement being signed. The day after a peace agreement is signed is sometimes more dangerous than the day after the war starts. There are a lot of very powerful people that are very, very upset that this MOU has been signed granting Iran so many leniencies. And due to the rather interesting position that the United States finds herself in, anytime big moves are being made with regards to the direction the nation is heading, very mysterious and very coincidental things tend to happen, especially if one particular entity is involved. In short, the war playing out in the shadows continues on and occasionally pops above the surface for the general public to observe. One of these little shadow war items, one of these things that has the fingerprint of fifth generation warfare all over it, came from a New York Times article that was released almost 2 weeks ago, which details the internal reaction within the White House to the growing Epstein scandal last year. I have been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and I wanted to mention this because I think it's related to what's going on right now on the diplomatic front in the Middle East and it might help us get an understanding of the seriousness of what's going on behind the scenes. Again, this is just a hunch. It's not a solid evidence of anything, but it's something to consider. The article itself was a part of a PR effort to promote the upcoming book of the authors detailing and chronicling President Trump's second term, and most of the article focused on the internal discussions within the administration to handle the Epstein issue. Not a rare form of content by any means, and when it was released, it didn't really get too much press coverage because it did not really contain that much new information. And the inside scoop style content detailing internal drama, it's not necessarily something that has implications for national security. However, the importance of this article is not what's in it, but how the information for it was obtained. Some of the quotations in the article seemed a little too specific for just someone having exceptionally good memory. The article described highly sensitive meetings in the darkest corners of the White House about the mismanagement of the Epstein scandal. Meetings so small and with everyone around the table being named that the sources of certain parts can be discerned rather easily. All of this appears to be a fanciful tale at face value, but now that this article has been circulating for a couple of weeks, it's become pretty obvious as in it's more likely than not that they actually have the audio tapes to back up the claims made in this report. Of course, until the raw tapes are leaked, if they are ever leaked, this just could be conjecture to drive book sales. We have to think of that first, right? But at this point it looks like this was a massive security breach that has largely been ignored. For example, the section detailing a meeting in which Dan Bongino resigned directly quotes the conversation in such excruciating detail that there is no way that a tape of this conversation doesn't exist. And since everyone in the room at the time is listed in the article, it doesn't take too much effort to determine who had bugged the meeting. One potential read of the report could be that this is just a political hit job enabled by exceptionally well-placed sources, and that this article is nothing more than that. After all, it's mainstream media, they do hit jobs all the time, they make up stuff all the time. It could just be made up. After all, The New York Times is one of the least trustworthy entities of modern memory. But if you skip right through the standard slop sections of the article and actually read between the lines of what message is being presented, the most dark and pessimistic view of this New York Times report is that it's a shot across the bow. Possibly a warning that other tapes exist on other topics. Following that line of thinking, exactly what's going on can't possibly be known, but the timing of all of this is suspect on its own. They sat on this reporting for over a year only to leak it right now, right at the same time, again, two weeks ago when the White House was internally thinking about signing a peace deal with the Iranians. So, right during a week, the the one time where the world is undergoing profound change, they would have had to have had documents circulating within the White House of this 14-point plan. They didn't just draft it 5 minutes before the meeting with the Iranians. This document has been in circulation probably for a while, maybe about 2 weeks, maybe exactly the same age as this article that was published by the New York Times. And now suddenly everything leaks around the same time. Very interesting timing that. And on the more technical side, I think the significance of the technical surveillance effort can't really be understated either. If a spy can gain an audio recording inside the situation room when the Vice President and other key leaders are there, and they can time that recording so perfectly that someone brings a printed report into the rooms so that the spy can gauge the reaction to that news hitting the the audience there, that is something that the highest levels of nation-state level espionage could not uncover with years of hard work and getting assets in the right place. Just think about this for a second. The Soviets spent the majority of the Cold War fighting tooth and nail to get this level of access. And many spies on both sides of the conflict were tried, convicted, and executed for such endeavors. Nowadays, the gravity of what was accomplished, this technical surveillance effort, is dismissed because talking head journalists who are being fed information have expressed shocking levels of naivety. I do not know why these journalists were so stupid, and somehow they did not understand that they were in very severe danger by publishing very sensitive information. I mean, clearly they did it, and it's going to be interesting to see how this works out, but it's very interesting the timing of all of this and the implications that are made. I don't necessarily believe a lot of the quotes in terms of how they're framed. Maybe there's context missing. I don't know. I'm not really concerned about the content of the article. I, of course, being interested in the things I'm interested in, was mostly focusing on the fact that they got recordings inside the situation room, and we just kind of glossed over that over the past 2 weeks. So, you've got somebody who's controlling journalists or feeding information to journalists proving to the White House that we can get to any of your secret conversations in the very deepest, darkest basements of the White House. Also, another piece of information might be sprinkled on top of all of this to to add a little bit more context. This entire week, most of the Israeli media has been absolutely livid about this MOU being signed. But, more specific than that, Miriam Adelson's newspaper, Israel Hayom, which is a publication that she publishes herself and often writes articles for, that newspaper has been publishing articles condemning the White House in the strongest possible terms for not continuing the war. Of course, understandably, every single Israeli news outlet from the political left, right, and center, these guys are going to be seething at the United States taking concrete steps to end the war. But, in this case, this is the personal family publication of President Trump's biggest donor. And now, around the same time, almost the exact same time, in fact, The New York Times releases this excerpt from an upcoming book that heavily implies that they have audio recordings of some of the most secret White House conversations that have ever taken place. And once again, looking at the very wave top level, what are these conversations about? They're not exactly detailing the President's favorite movie. They're not exactly detailing the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. This report precisely details the biggest [ __ ] in President Trump's armor, the Epstein files. How this situation will develop is anyone's guess, but right now the stakes are palpably high and the potential for very serious things to happen is extremely great. Very strong flashing neon sign messages are being sent to the White House from a certain demographic and that's pretty concerning. Though it might be out of the news cycle now, I'm sure the right people have a very long memory and have not forgotten the Golden Patriot incident, another major message sent to the White House. And I think that that message wasn't interpreted in the way that it was intended to be sent. So, I would expect that a lot of quiet security measures are going to be in place if they're not already in place or trying to be worked up by a lot of the old hands who know ball, as the kids say these days. The idiots at the FBI, yeah, they're useless, but I would venture a guess that a lot of the older guys at varying levels of bureaucracy know the risks and understand that right now, right when a peace deal has been signed and has angered a lot of people who have a lot of deep talents in the government, this is now a very dangerous time. And I'm very concerned about and security of everybody involved in all this because I I think that that's I just get a bad feeling about it. So, now that we've got the the stage set and with all that kind of insanity and very palpable risk kind of noted, okay, duly noted, why did the United States sign this really terrible deal right now? Because let's face it, whether you support the deal or not, pretty much everybody hates it. The war hawks don't like it because it grants a lot of stuff to Iran. The people who don't really care about it don't really like it because it grants a lot of stuff to Iran and we fought the war for basically nothing. The people who are maybe on the fence are looking and saying, "Wait a minute, we blew all this stuff up. My gas prices went up, my grocery bill went up and all of that was for nothing just for us to pay the Iranians reparations." So, basically no one is happy with the deal. Now, that doesn't mean that we should tear up the deal and throw it away. And why did the US, knowing this, why did the US sign this deal right now of all times? Well, there are a few different reasons. I'll just run through them really quickly. First of all is oil. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has run its course. Uh President Trump himself has said that the US was down to only about a few weeks of oil left before we had to do something, which aligns to somewhat with what everyone has been saying for a while. We drained a lot of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve just to keep prices down, and we still could not um keep up with the demand, right? And I think it's now safe to say that the alleged secret operation to get 100 million barrels of oil out of the Gulf, which we discussed last week, I think that was probably completely fake. As much as I would like to think that the US Navy has super secret ways of handling the situation and can pull off some pretty neat tricks, the US Navy's got some pretty cool stuff they can do. Uh I still think that this was a complete fabrication and that we only smuggled a handful of ships out at best during this entire war. Even if we were secretly paying the Iranians through a third-party mediate mediator to get oil out, it still wasn't enough. In any case, uh the White House has said we're out of petroleum. They said it. So, the MOU was signed to open the strait. It might be as simple as that. And this matters because of the timing for tankers. Uh once a tanker is fully filled up with crude oil in the Persian Gulf and it starts heading toward the United States, it's only going to be moving at about 10 to 12 mph, so it takes weeks, sometimes a couple of months to actually get here once the flow of maritime traffic restarts. And again, if weather is poor, uh it can it can add a month to the to the trip. It's hard to say. Since most of these ships have been sitting still in warm water for a while, they now have a big barnacle problem. And the world it does not have enough ports to fully service a lot of these ships, so they're going to be moving pretty slow. They're going to have a lot of drag in the water. So, again, getting this crude uh flow back to normal is going to take a long time. Another reason why we may have chose to end the war right now is due to the loss of strategic assets, mostly radar sites. For all of the damage that we caused in Iran and have tried to catalog over the past quarter of a year, the Iranians have absolutely wrecked our radar sites, and we can't exactly replace them. The United States uh dropping a bomb on the door of an underground mountain complex is not comparable to the Iranians dropping a drone on a billion-dollar radar system. So, remember those sites that they hit during the early stages of the war? Yeah, those weren't even for Iran. Those were for monitoring Russian ballistic missile launches. We lost enough strategic assets to the point that we did not have as many eyes and ears as we used to in the region on that half of the planet. So, that makes it kind of hard to wage a war and continue deeper offensive options well within Iran. So, I think we lost a lot on the technical side of things. Another reason is logistics. Being forward deployed for so long creates logistical challenges that are hard to encapsulate and they're really hard to plan for before a war. A carrier strike group that has been at sea for 6 months is going to have less capability than a carrier that just arrived on station. Now, normally this effect is negligible in terms of overall combat readiness, but we have to remember that this was an over-the-horizon war. The fighting had to be conducted from such extremely long range and the unknown secondary and tertiary effects of that probably caused a lot of complications. It's a lot harder to fight a war when you can't use most of your military bases that you had put throughout the region specifically for war. But by and large, the reason that the US signed this deal is simply due to us running out of options. We really did not have any choice. This is not something that is specific to our nation. This is something every nation is going to deal with that engages in warfare because as time goes on, the options for military success are much reduced. The longer a war drags on, the less likely you are to have a favorable outcome at the end of that war. This is true going all the way back to the Peloponnesian War, right? And in this case, the nature of the target itself was never really a viable military objective. We just we just did not have the technical ability to wage war in Iran. We weren't ready yet. Now, we could have been had we made decisions 20-30 years ago and we didn't have the G watt to shape a lot of our current doctrine, but, you know, wishing doesn't make it so. Yes, we blew up a lot of stuff. We took out their steel industry. We took out a lot of their factories, we took out a pretty much every military target that was above ground in terms of factories and production and all that kind of stuff. And that's no small feat except for the fact that we're now going to give them $300 to rebuild all that stuff. So, not only did we not have good effects on target, we did not drop bombs on buildings that ended up stopping the war, but we're also going to pay for all the damage that we caused. So, you can't even say at the end of this, well, okay, you know, we may be walking away from this and it may not be super strategic the great, but hey, at least we set back the Iranians a long way in terms of their production and their and their weapons. And they're not they're not going to be a threat for a very long time. No, you can't make that argument if you're giving them hundreds of billions of dollars because we're just going to rebuild their stuff bigger and better than it ever was. And we're doing that because we have to because we have no other option. So, again, very frustrating experience, I know. I know that a lot of people are kind of upset with the way that this turned out. I'm sorry that this is the way that it turned out. It is unfortunate. It gives me no pleasure in saying these things. It really doesn't because again, my country lost a war. And I don't really like that fact. It's not pleasant. Even though I did not support the war at all, I personally thought that I I really hoped that we would win it or at least not lose as much as we have. So, there's that just for the record. But that's kind of where we're at right now. And once again, the fat lady has not sung. The the MOU may be torn up by this afternoon by the time I'm done editing this, who knows. The things things are changing by the day. All I know is that right now it seems like the US has run out of options. The Iranians, how many options they have? I don't know. It's probably not unlimited but they have more options than we do. And they have more control over the situation than we do. And since that's the case, every day that goes by and the Israelis continue their situation in in Lebanon, that's just going to make it much more costly for the United States. So, the Israelis are directly hurting the United States with their war in Lebanon because now we're having to give up. We're having to increase the number of zeros on the checks we're giving to Iran. We're going to have to sweeten the pot to get them back to the table. And all of it is just because the Israelis want to make a point of how much they control us. So, yeah, not super great. So, all of that out of the way, and uh all of the past past and present kind of covered, let's move into the future and talk about what's going to happen next. Well, we can't ever really know, uh but there are a few things that could be on the menu over the next few months, weeks, whatever, which would be good to know about. The first one is, of course, Cuba. Uh obviously, the White House is going to need a pretty big win, uh but Cuba is probably going to be re-examined after July 4th, probably once the 60-day uh ceasefire agreement thing is over. Once the United States and Iran sign a full-blown peace deal, then I think we're going to start pivoting to Cuba. Because the White House is going to need a win, and to just purely basing this off of the gut assessment of the personalities involved in all of this, it would make perfect sense. Just as kind of a way of starting over and getting some kind of military victory, some kind of trophy. Now, what that might look like, I have no earthly idea. Cuba is not Venezuela, Cuba is not Iran. Cuba is not what I would call a great military power, either. It's not something that they're going to have a whole lot of say about, but if the US wanted to occupy Cuba or something like that, even more so than we already have with Gitmo, then we probably could do that. And it's going to be uh something to look out for in the future. The next one's China. China, uh dear friends, as you probably can imagine, has been very busy, and they have been taking a lot of notes. For one, they have been able to gain a lot of valuable combat data on the systems and weapons we use, and we used a lot of developmental technologies during this war in Iran. Just as an example, we dropped land mines uh in Iran that have only been ever seen in line drawings. And now the Iranians have given us photos of what they look like, so there's that, you know, weapons technology, dud missiles, uh all the Tomahawks that didn't go off. Yeah, those are going right to Beijing, probably, or Russia. Although Russia probably already has a lot of this stuff, but also on the information warfare side of things, we released dozens of video clips uh from the official CENTCOM account, which should probably have been censored for reasons, but in any case, the Chinese noticed and have probably gained a lot of combat data from the stuff we've actually released officially. I would also be willing to bet that a few of these shoot-down incidents that we have been made aware of during this war were probably carried out by Chinese MANPADS. Just my guess, no evidence on that at all, but that's probably happened or at least some of the missiles that the Iranians have fired are probably Chinese, too. That would be my guess. That would probably be a very sensible thing for the Chinese to do because where else are you going to be able to test your missile systems against a Patriot battery, right? Then in the Middle East. I'm sure the Chinese were all up in that, right? And trying to figure out what they could do. They probably fronted a lot of those missiles for the Iranians. But, apart from the military side of things, the economic response was actually much more interesting and I I'm going to have to dig more into this too because the main reason, not the only reason, but the main reason that oil did not hit two to $300 a barrel is because China cut their imports by over 40% and they started drawing from their own strategic reserves basically as soon as the war started. And personally, I want to know why. Maybe it's purely economic for them, but this decision has been puzzling me for a couple of months and now that we know with a little more clarity that they cut imports by a lot, I want to know why. They could have easily screwed us over, but they didn't. Well, they kind of did a little bit uh because their ships were able to get through sporadically throughout the war, but still, they could have made this a lot more painful for us and I suspect it's because we've told them that they can have Taiwan. I mentioned this back during President Trump's state visit, but at that point, China had already cut imports, so maybe there was something there, I don't know. Something for me to dig into later. Maybe there isn't really a deliberate answer. Maybe it's just Maybe it's complicated. I don't know, but still, kind of interesting. China is always making plans. Some nefarious, some not so nefarious, but they are certainly making strategic moves of their own to dominate their region. Another uh region to watch over the next few weeks is is to be Turkey. Many people seem to suspect that the Israelis and Americans will pivot to Turkey as Turkey is the next big power within the Israelis sphere of influence. I'm not so sure about the Israeli pivot to Turkey just yet because I don't think they're done with Iran yet. And since Iran has come out of this affair drastically more powerful than they were at the start, I don't think the Israelis are going to want to take on Iran and Turkey at the same time. Nevertheless, Israeli politicians have already pivoted toward Turkey. They're already starting to make uh speeches in the Knesset. So, we'll see what they say. Usually, Israelis are pretty pretty open about what they want to do. Uh we just don't tend to take them very seriously, but if you just listen to what the Israelis say in their own uh Knesset, you'll be quite radicalized, I think. Uh but anyway, so Turkey is on the menu and uh finally, another thing to watch out for is the military industrial complex. This is again something I don't need to state too much uh obviously, but domestically, the military industrial complex will be in overdrive to build and sell a complete overhaul of weapons, strategic defenses, base building materials. Everything is going to be on the menu for purchase. And right on the front page of the brochure is going to be a sales tagline that basically says, "You want to avoid getting your rear end kicked in Iran again? Buy our missiles." So, expect some seriously large budgets and continuing resolutions to fund defense-adjacent technologies, probably stuff like AI weapons development, experimental stuff, you name it, right? Bottom line, all of the lessons learned when it comes to munitions and targeting will be approved upon by increasing procurement. But all in all, just to wrap things up for today, it must be noted that this might not be over. It is possible, I don't know how likely it is, but I'll mention it anyway, it's possible that this is merely a brief pause and it's not the real end to the war. It's pretty clear that all sides, like I mentioned earlier, the far left, the far right, the Zionists, and the warhawks, and everybody else, all of the demographics involved look at this deal as it's been signed and say, "This is a bad deal." That is just undeniable. You can call it a surrender document if you want, or you can soften it however you wish, but the deal is certainly not balanced. It favors the Iranians by a wide margin. Now again, I argue that, well, yeah, that's unfortunate. It really is, but we didn't really have any other option. But, there are other thoughts. There are other ideas that this might actually just be a ruse, and that the United States is signing a bad deal intentionally because we have no intent of going by that deal later on. As it stands, the MOU is just that, a memorandum of understanding. It's not a treaty that has been ratified by Congress. So, just like the president signed it, he can equally rip it up, and there will be no legal consequence. I do have to be careful, though, because even though I am personally skeptical about this deal being signed as it has, there is also the motivation to keep the snowball rolling because of the sunk cost of the coming involved in the war. I mean, even for me, uh I have spent months of my life chronicling the war, finding every single bomb crater and missile strike that I can find, in addition to mapping out as much of Iran's military infrastructure as I could find. And now that the war is theoretically over, it was really all for nothing. Now, personally, this doesn't really bother me. It's just kind of the way the intel world works. 90% of what you do never ends up getting used or is a waste for later. That's okay, I'm used to that, no problem. I'm very, very happy that this situation, this war, is being resolved, but the past 6 months have definitely been a whirlwind, and I'll tell you, it doesn't feel super great to have the president himself say things that I personally took a lot of flak for at the time, during the heat of the fighting, when a course correction could have saved lives. The president is saying things that we were saying weeks and months ago, and he's saying it now, but when we were saying it, it could have saved lives if he had admitted to it. In the past 24 hours, President Trump said that it's okay for Iran to enrich uranium, and it's okay for them to have missiles because it's not fair for them to give up their missiles if everyone around them has missiles. J.D. Vance also said that the Israelis better be careful with their words because President Trump is the only head of state in the entire world that is sympathetic to their nation, which is a shocking bit of honesty that I was genuinely surprised to see because it prompts the question of, "Yeah, why is that? Why is it that the entire planet despises them? Could it be due to their actions, particularly their behavior during this conflict?" I don't know. I'm just finishing the question that the vice president himself prompted. Anyway, it would be very, very foolish to think that things have changed on this front because it's very clear that the elephant in the room is going to have to be addressed at some point. Maybe the best thing to come out of the war is that just highlighting who actually is running things. The good news is that the Iranians know how hard of a challenge this is. They are not stupid. They know who runs things here in the US, and they know that signing a document is not likely to change things on that front. So, my guess is that the Iranians will probably be willing to grant a lot of slack on the Lebanon issue for the time being, and they are probably going to play things cool with the Strait of Hormuz as well. I know, not a super popular assessment, I guess, but if they're smart, that's what they're going to do. Now, they have a lot of internal infighting, uh which is obviously uh a factor, but they are certainly not going to shut the strait down anytime they get a hangnail. The Iranians have been very, very calculating and deliberate this entire time, and there's no reason to believe that they won't continue to do so. Remember, they have a new Ayatollah and a relatively new president as well, both of whom are very new in their roles. So, they're playing things very carefully for now. However, the IRGC is simply not going to allow the situation to remain the same in Lebanon. There is an element within Iranian society that wants war. They've said, "Enough is enough," and they want to keep going. Lebanon makes it hard to stifle these elements within Iran, and maybe there's the maybe that's the reason for that. If it was Gaza or the West Bank, that's that's a little bit more complicated, and the Iranians would probably address those issues more indirectly than just launching missiles into Israel every every time some IDF soldier does something in Gaza. They're probably not going to do that. But, Lebanon is a full-blown nation-state that has a way longer history of independence, and they are being straight-up invaded. The Iranians are not going to tolerate a sovereign nation state being invaded in their region. They're just not, because it has the potential to affect them. The Israelis can always one day just decide to bomb targets in Iran, and the US will dutifully provide the subservient aerial refueling that we are legendary for. The IDF, by the way, does not actually have very much long-range aerial refueling capability. They only have uh older, I think, Boeing 707s that have been converted to be aerial refueling platforms. They have had the opportunity to invest in the KC-135 program, if I'm not mistaken, uh but they prefer the US Air Force to do it. Uh they prefer to make us do it for them when they carry out attacks in Iran. It's It's just kind of a domination thing uh that they like to do to us a lot of the time. Sort of like how Netanyahu, when he comes to Washington, he brings all of his laundry, like his entire family's laundry, to take advantage of the diplomatic laundry services in DC. You should look that up if you're interested about that. It's more of an insult to us uh than than anything, but that's kind of what they do. I would say they're not the only nation to do it, but I'm not aware of any other nation that they kind of treats us this way. But, anyway, when the Israelis get us to refuel them when they carry out attacks in Iran, that means we're now involved in the attack in Iran, and guess what? Now, we're back in it again. So, that's how the US will probably be dragged into this again as if the Israelis carry out long-range bombing attacks in Iran, we're going to have to refuel them to do so. They can probably carry out one or two smaller attacks with drop tanks. Again, the Israelis put two secret military bases, two secret airstrips in Iraq for this war. Uh I don't know if they're still there, but they just don't have that long-range targeting capability. They rely on us for that, and we never tell them no. So, when this eventually happens, the Iranians will know for sure that the US was involved in it. We can claim, "Oh, we didn't know the Israelis were going to do anything." Well, our refueling aircraft are off the ground, then they know the the Iranians know that we helped them do it. So, the Iranians are not stupid. If I can figure this out with Twitter, then they can figure this out with the nation state apparatus behind them. And the Iranians, they don't want to live in a status like that. They would prefer to settle a lot of this hostility right now, rather than peeling this band-aid off slowly over the next few years after they inevitably get hit again and again and again and again, every 6 months or so. So, the bottom line is that if the Israelis continue their war in Lebanon, there really is no hope for peace. And right now, there's really no hope for restraining the Israelis, even though it would be very easy to do so. And around and around and around we go. Not a super great way to wrap up the week, I guess, but there's on the one hand hope that we might get back to normal. The the strait maybe opened. Maybe we can get into the into the situation where we have cheap gas again and cheap grocery bills. It's looking hopeful. Uh this time last week, it was not looking hopeful. This time last month, it was definitely off the table. So, we are making progress. This is good. This is a good thing. It's just that these last-minute derailing things are just so completely typical. And nobody really wants to address the elephant room. So, this might be a point of contention that kind of drags out farther. I very highly doubt that the Iranians are going to go back to the full-blown war again unless the US does. I think everybody has a lot to say with this. They may They're probably going to close the strait, though. How that's going to work out, I don't know, because the Israelis are essentially uncontrollable. They're just kind of a rogue actor in all of this. And that's going to complicate things moving forward. So, that's really where we're at right now. And we're going to have to see how this plays out over the next few weeks. For now, that's all I have for today. So, I'll cut it here and we'll finish up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Great work all around as usual. Lots of good reports. I had a pretty significant thunderstorm hit my location right at the moment that the net started. But even though my own antenna was being whipped around quite a bit, I was still able to engage and pick up quite a few offline news reports from around the country. Seeing as how things are going around the world with regards to news being either censored, outright nonexistent, or difficult to access due to data security concerns, efforts like this help us to have other options available just in case. I have also been experimenting a bit with Reticulum over the past few weeks, and I'm starting to get spun up on plugging all of this stuff together. For many of you who read my news reports throughout the week, how cool would it be to one day get these reports completely offline via radio, even if the entire internet and power grid were to go down? I think that would be pretty cool. Uh I've also been working on trying out the Nomad Net, which is kind of a system for hosting primitive web pages that can be accessed via radio if need be. I think that's pretty cool as well, and I look forward to experimenting with this stuff even more, and really improving our resiliency so that no matter what, we can always stay connected. So, that's all I have for today. More to come on a lot of this stuff later on once I get more experience with it myself, and hopefully things can calm down in the Middle East, and a point of stability can at least be reached for a while. Either way, we'll keep an eye on it, so thank you for all of your support. Thanks again to those of you on Patreon who keep the project cooking along, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for March 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.

//The Wire//2300Z November 21, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL ARRESTED FOR TERRORISM PLOT IN VIRGINIA. SOMALIAN COMMUNITY IN MINNEAPOLIS FUNDING AL-SHABAB TERROR GROUP VIA HAWALA PAYMENTS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -HomeFront- Minnesota: The situation continues to deteriorate in Minneapolis, as Somali crime continues to present terrorism concerns. This morning Police Chief Brian O'Hara apologized to the Somali community, using multiple interpreters to account for the dialect differences of the substantial Somali population in the city. Specifically, he apologized for angering the Somali community by casually mentioning in a media interview a few days ago, that Somalians are committing crimes in the city. Analyst Comment: This morning, the situation got worse. A closed-source mainstream media report was published, that claimed that remittance payments from Somalians in Minneapolis has risen to more than $1.7 billion for 2023, most of which has come from Somalians fraudulently gaming the Autism Services department. According to locals, the scam is simple, but widespread. Somalian parents will take their children to Somalian doctors, who will fraudulently diagnose their children with autism. From there, Somalian community leaders (including elected officials) will facilitate the enrollment of the children in Autism Services programs, artificially driving up numbers...and subsequently state funding. Over time, a lot of money ends up allocated to programs (and even people) that simply don't exist. All of this is pencil-whipped efficiently; medical records are falsified, children that don't even exist have full attendance records at autism clinics that also don't exist, and the money flows freely from the State, with everyone along the way getting a cash payment as part of their cut for the racket. Turns out, nearly all Somalians send this money back home to Somalia via Hawala brokers (which is a money transfer system) to avoid paying taxes...which means that billions of tax dollars flow directly to al-Shabab, the legendary terror group that has conducted ethnic cleansing operations throughout the continent of Africa. In short, Somalians are currently funneling welfare funding directly to al-Shabab, making the taxpayers of Minnesota the main funding source for the terror group. As surprising at that is to some, this is an older story that is more or less an open secret in the Twin Cities. A few years ago a nearly identical scheme was uncovered, which involved the attempted theft of $300 million of tax dollars that was to be used for the Feeding Our Future program. 56x people, all Somalian and mostly government employees or contractors, were convicted in that case, which had the same exact organization; since the Somalian community quite literally dominates all levels of society in Minneapolis, easily traceable fraud occurs on a gargantuan scale. Virginia: This morning two individuals were arrested after planning to conduct terror attacks against ICE agents. Two brothers, Mark and John Bennett were arrested after planning to fly to Las Vegas, in order to meet up with other insurgents to conduct attacks against ICE agents. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The manner in which these two were initially discovered puts them in the running for the dumbest criminals ever. Just by happenstance, they were overheard discussing the details of their plan by an off-duty police officer, who was sitting at the next table over from them while dining at a restaurant in Virginia Beach. After authorities figured out who they were and started investigating the incident, they discovered that this dinnertime banter was not merely hyperbole, but an actual terrorism plot. They had already purchased firearms specifically for their plans, which they bought because they "utilize(s) the explosive rounds that are needed to penetrate the vests". Which is a statement that, although completely ignorant of how firearms work, still conveys the deliberate nature of their plans. Idiots or not, they certainly were serious. Most notably, John Bennett is currently the Assistant Principal at Kempsville High School, and has been placed on leave (but not fired) due to this terrorism plot. Both brothers have also been granted bond, and were released from custody almost immediately after their arrest. From a counterterrorism perspective, this is a literal textbook case of a terrorist moving into the final steps of the attack cycle; they had identified their targets, selected and obtained their weapons systems, and purchased plane tickets to maneuver to the objective area. These are the final planning steps before an attack is usually conducted, and by this stage, most counterterrorism agencies are powerless to stop an attack. Despite presenting all of this evidence, a judge released them from custody anyway. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z April 8, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: TRADE TARIFFS ON CHINA TO BEGIN TOMORROW AFTER NO DEAL REACHED TODAY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Afghanistan: Questionable reporting has emerged claiming that the United States has re-occupied Bagram Airbase. An article was published by Medium two days ago, which claimed that American C-17's landed at Bagram after being handed back control of the airbase from the Taliban. AC: So far, this story as presented appears to be a fabrication; no sources, including the ADS-B tracking services mentioned in the article confirmed any aircraft landing. The aircraft specifically mentioned in the reporting, a C-17 operating as callsign MOOSE59 (tail number: 02-1099) probably did fly through Afghan airspace on April 5th. However, it did NOT land in Afghanistan...it's destination was Tajikistan. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Questions remain regarding the details of trade tariffs with China. President Trump's trade tariffs may or may not already be in effect as of noon today, earlier than previously announced. The tariffs are also allegedly higher than previously stated, with some media outlets stating that since no agreement was reached at noon today, a 117% tariff with China will be implemented tomorrow. Otherwise, the economic turmoil of yesterday morning has largely leveled out, with most indexes ending up not as effected as first expected. This morning the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 to approve the White House's request to continue deportations of violent criminals under the Alien Enemies Act. AC: This particular action by the SCOTUS isn't necessarily a win for the White House, as the actual opinions provided by the SCOTUS confirm that all Justices think this law *is* subject to judicial review, but this review must be conducted in the original jurisdiction (which was in Texas). Either way, all interpretations of the law are up for debate, so this will certainly be argued in court over the next few years, and remain entangled in some form or fashion. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Just because something seems true, doesn't mean that it is....as rather poignantly confirmed yet again just yesterday. Satellite imagery from just a few days ago confirms nothing has moved at Bagram, and local Taliban officials have proudly stated that they control the airfield. However, this article scandal probably does tacitly imply something interesting...mostly that the United States without question has eyes and ears in the region. What was originally spun as a fake news story might actually have stumbled upon a grain of truth; This flight was probably related to some secret-squirrel tasking, even if the aircraft didn't land directly at Bagram. Despite rather exuberant denials of such, the CIA and other intelligence agencies almost certainly maintain a foothold in Afghanistan, to some degree. Normally, CIA operations personnel don't fly on standard USAF C-17's...they have their own not-so-secret fleet of clandestine logistics aircraft. However, considering the wider context, and even without any evidence whatsoever, a random Medium journalist with 86 followers can claim "the CIA is here"...and in almost all cases be correct. In this case, this is due to the most significant factor of all forms of warfare throughout the history of mankind...geography. Right about now, with relations with China deteriorating, not having control of Bagram Airbase is a serious strategic disadvantage to the United States. This airbase is one of the reasons the American occupation lasted as long as it did; one of the major unspoken strategic goals of maintaining a foothold in Afghanistan is that it's geography made it a fortress country right at China's backdoor. Now, with trouble brewing in the Far East, not having a foothold at Bagram is disadvantageous, and also why the information space is ripe for a deception campaign, and stories like this gain so much traction immediately...it makes total sense that the US government would do something like this at this point. However, in this case, the claims as they have been made are false. Nevertheless, with the entire global order experiencing a level of upheaval in many ways, careful attention would be wise to place on not just the places where new conflicts might emerge...but also the old sand where forgotten wars were fought long ago. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z April 24, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: BUILDUP OF AMERICAN FORCES IN MIDDLE EAST REACHES RECORD LEVELS. KUWAITI BORDER CHECKPOINTS HIT BY FPV DRONES. ARREST MADE REGARDING MOLOTOV ATTACK IN LOUISIANA.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: Overnight Kuwaiti forces reported two FPV drone strikes on border crossing checkpoints with Iraq. No casualties were reported as a result of the attack. Analyst Comment: The statement provided by the Kuwaiti Army did not specifically disclose which border crossings were targeted, however there are only two crossing points in total: one main crossing on the northern border, and a smaller outpost on the western border. The interesting detail in the notice is the disclosure that these attacks were conducted by fiber-optically-guided FPV drones, and both of these sites were too far away from each other for these attacks to have been conducted by the same team. -HomeFront- Louisiana: This morning one individual was arrested following the firebombing of a Tesla Service Center two weeks ago. John Michael Hinkhouse was arrested for throwing a Molotov device at the entrance to the facility, which resulted in fire damaging the front of the building. Hinkhouse was located after security cameras tracked him back to his residence after the attack. Washington D.C. - Two incidents involving city busses have taken place over the past 24 hours. Yesterday, a bus caught fire in the 9th Street Tunnel, resulting in the tunnel being shut down for many hours. The cause of the fire remains unknown. This morning, two city busses collided with each other head-on in the Pentagon's south parking lot, resulting in a total of 23x people being injured. Analyst Comment: Currently there are no indications that either incident was nefarious in any way, however it's worth paying attention to during periods of heightened terrorism risk, just in case other incidents pop up later. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Concerning strategic movement in the Middle East, American cargo flights continue unabated, along with the forward deployment of even more fighter aircraft. Last night another squadron of F/A-18's arrived at Al Dhafra Airbase in the UAE, and the USS *GEORGE H.W. BUSH* (CVN 77) arrived in the Indian Ocean following her long journey around Africa. Another Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB), the USS *MIGUEL KIETH* (ESB 5) is also projected to be approaching the operational area, after having transited the Strait of Malacca and should be arriving on station soon (though it is not clear as to if she is expected to take part in this operation). This brings a total of 3x aircraft carriers, 2x Expeditionary Sea Bases, and 1x amphibious assault ship (a total of 6 "flat tops") for whatever operations are planned. Of note, CENTCOM has provided press materials that imply that the *BUSH* is not replacing the *LINCOLN* or the damaged *FORD* but will serve independently as a third strike group throughout the region. This buildup has become even more substantial than the 4+ months of lead-up to this war breaking out, with even more naval assets being transferred from the Pacific to supplement the forces already in theater. As a reminder, at least one Brigade Combat Team (BCT) from the 82nd Airborne is still in the region. Considering all of these developments, the grand question remains: Does the US plan to reignite the war? This remains an unknown, and it's impossible to know what secret decisions have been made at the upper echelons of government. What is certain, is that a large-scale rearmament and resupply operation has been ongoing since the ceasefire went into effect, and enough resources are on station to conduct large scale operations if that is the chosen course of action. Not only is the war not over, but there are now vastly more resources in theater right now, than at the start of the conflict. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

…This came to light most publicly during President Trump's visit to Turkey for the NATO summit a few days ago when the Secret Service had to switch back to the old Air Force One due…

key for the NATO summit on the new airframe, but during the trip, an undisclosed security issue prompted the Secret Service to switch back to the older platform. Analyst Comment: The details of exactly what the…

key for the NATO summit on the new airframe, but during the trip, an undisclosed security issue prompted the Secret Service to switch back to the older platform. Analyst Comment: The details of exactly what the…

…Secret Service response to this attack, which we can get to in due time. Right now, though, since time is of the essence, I would

…One suspect wounded by Secret Service. Project Freedom operation in Hormuz remains intense as a mass convoy of civilian ships stages to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Mass shooting reported in Texas. Beginning with international events…

…of securing the National Mall in the wake of the various proficiency concerns present amongst the US Secret Service, this event moving indoors is almost certainly more of a security precaution than anything else. This is…

…An undercover US Secret Service agent saw the suspect printing a firearm in his waistband and requested a uniformed officer to make contact. As soon as the uniformed officer arrived, the suspect ran, drawing his firearm…

…Yesterday evening the US Secret Service announced the dismantling of a major telecommunications threat allegedly targeting the UN General Assembly currently underway in New York City.

…Best had previously attempted to breach the compound in the past, and had also made verbal threats toward Secret Service personnel. In June of last year, Best was arrested after blocking a traffic lane entering the…

…One Secret Service agent was shot in the vest at some point during the fray, allegedly by the suspect. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the wake of the attempted assassination of President Trump, many are questioning…

…One shooter reportedly neutralized by Secret Service. On the home front in Washington, D.C. this evening shots were fired at the Washington Hilton Hotel during the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Initial reports by law…