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Intel Update · 2025-10-12
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.
Intel Update · 2026-03-29
Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to The Underground. This is the Intel update for March 22nd through the 28th, 2026. Well, we are officially 1 month into the Gulf War, and not only is no end in sight, but this week has been host to major escalations on most theaters of the war. Today, I'm going to cover a lot of the topics that I have not had time to cover throughout the week, and more generally reflect on the strategic nature of the war. So, a fair warning, we'll be digging into a lot of discussion and debatable opinion today, which I hope will be helpful in getting to the truth of what is actually happening. We can bean count impact craters, and we can watch oil refineries burn, but to actually get to the meat of how this war is shaping the world, we have to dig up a lot of uncomfortable topics sometimes. So, we'll get to that in just a bit. But, starting at the very top, the 60,000-ft view, there are many hotspots for conflict around the world, and we are seeing a lot of smaller conflicts breaking out that seem unrelated at face value, but are very significant conflicts nonetheless. The war in the Middle East is, of course, largely centered in Iran. However, this conflict has spread to be a more regional war at this point as Iranian counterattacks are taking place throughout the entire region. Despite what the White House says, drone and missile attacks are continuing, and the Iranian ballistic missile attacks have been extremely devastating for Israel over the past few days due to the early warning radar sites that were destroyed on the first few days of the war. Separately from the Gulf War, the Israelis are fighting a ground invasion of Lebanon, which has made significant advances at significant cost. This conflict has been a little bit more difficult to track, so we'll have to get back to that next week. I'm still compiling a lot of the data for for the Lebanese war, but suffice it to say, that's a pretty hot shooting war as well, and I think this one's going to go on for a while, too. Bridging the divide between the West and the East, Turkey is becoming more involved in either of the two wars. I'm not quite sure. If that's confusing, I understand. What I'm referring to is the targeting of a tanker vessel in Turkish waters a few days ago. Initially, this attack was assessed to be related to the war in Ukraine because this tanker was carrying Russian oil. However, many people have also made the claim that this vessel was actually targeted either by Iran or by Israel as part of the Gulf War. At the moment, I cannot say what the actual truth is. It makes more sense for it to be Ukraine simply due to geography, but at this point, nothing is off the table, and the Israelis have openly signaled that for them, Turkey is next, so they may also be seeking to bring in Turkey into this little excursion in the Middle East. Still too soon to tell, though, so we'll have to get back to that once we get more information. This leads us to Europe, where other conflicts around the world also saw a resurgence this week, such as the war in Ukraine, which brought about an intensification of targeting efforts throughout the continent as the Ukrainians targeted oil terminals in St. Petersburg. Again, drone warfare is making the world a very, very small place, and to be located thousands of miles away from the front lines is no longer a guarantee of safety in today's modern world. Also far away from the front lines, the global impacts of this conflict, especially the war conflict in Ukraine and also the conflict in Iran, are impacting the entire planet at this point as the world tries to start functioning in a manner where global markets are being impacted. Famine potential in Southeast Asia is growing as fertilizer shipments have effectively been cut off, but even taking global maritime choke points out of the equation, we have to remember the transportation is not the only problem here. Much of the fertilizer market revolves around urea, which is created during the distillation of liquefied natural gas. And since many LNG facilities, such as in Qatar, have been totally destroyed to the point that it will take years to repair them, even if the Strait of Hormuz were freely available to travel through, the petroleum, fertilizer, plastics, and gas markets are going to take years to return to normal simply from the production side of the house based on stuff that's already been destroyed. So, again, these are two separate issues. We don't just have the problems with the Strait of Hormuz and getting cargo in and out of the Persian Gulf. That is a problem. Traffic has not resumed to normal levels just yet, and the Iranians definitely control the strait. But, apart from the transportation issues, we also have problems on the production side of the house because a lot of the refineries and facilities and factories, which produce these materials, the raw materials, they've been targeted and they've been destroyed or degraded heavily to the point where it's going to take months to repair them, if not years. So, again, stepping back, these are the hotspots that are worthy of note this week. The war in the Persian Gulf is devastating the region. There's a separate war going on in Lebanon, and of course, the Ukraine war is uh starting to heat back up again, at least in terms of H asymmetric warfare tactics, and all of the above are expanding substantially and escalating every day with no end in sight. So, this is most certainly a very, very busy time. On the home front, we have also had several items of note to take place this week. Out west, several different wildfires have swept through the state of Nebraska, which has reminded us that wildfire season is most certainly well underway. The Moral Fire and the Cottonwood Fire were initially more devastating with the Moral Fire being the largest wildfire in state history. Now, two more fires, the Minor Fire and Ashby Fire, are currently being worked in the central regions of the state. These wildfires in Nebraska have devastated the agricultural community, and a lot of this area is big cattle country. Ranchers from neighboring states have been trucking in hay and feed to donate to farmers in need with many other recovery efforts being underway. So, again, from the very wave top level, this is a good example of how important and challenging it is to balance out all of the concerns of the modern day. Yes, it is important to know about what's going on in the Middle East, but at the same time, a wildfire in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska removes the food sources for cattle, production cycles are thrown off, and suddenly you've got expensive beef or even beef shortages. Now, in this case, I'm not really sure how much the Nebraska fires will affect the food supply. I don't think it'll be that devastating, but these things are always hard to determine. Many people may not notice anything at all, but it's still a good example of logistical frailty that helps us understand which situations to monitor. Around the country, more direct threats have come to light regarding shadow warfare tactics that are being undertaken nationwide. This week, the hot topic on that front has been the indictment of two Chinese nationals who are alleged to be responsible for the attempted IED attack at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida a couple of weeks ago. I don't want to comment too much on this case just yet because there are a lot of contradictory details that don't quite make sense, so please forgive me. I need to do a little bit more research. But right now, this looks like this is probably the classic Chinese sabotage act undertaken during a time of war purely for the purposes of causing chaos within the American homeland. Remember, everybody is expecting Iranian sleeper cells to be activated in the United States right now, but the Chinese also know this as well. So, when we see an IED at the front gate of the headquarters of CENTCOM, we might be inclined to think the Iranians did it, when in reality, it was really a false flag carried out by the Chinese. Or at least, that's what it seems like at the moment. We can never really be too sure about these things. I just wanted to mention this one because it is most certainly false flag season right now, and the whole world knows this, too. So, while we argue on the internet about those pesky and elusive Iranian sleeper cells, what is undeniable and far more likely, in my opinion, are the risks associated with any number of unnamed groups and nation-states alike that greatly profit when chaos is sown in the American homeland. This will be something to watch out for over the next few weeks, and it would be a good idea to pump the brakes on immediately assessing blame for whatever attacks take place over the next few days, weeks, months. So, that's it for the homeland this week. I know, not a whole lot. Please forgive me. I was going to have another investigation that I had hoped to wrap up or at least get to a point to where I can share my findings this week, but I think I'm going to need some more time on that. Suffice it to say, there's a lot of fifth-generation warfare stuff going on in the homeland that I am most certainly aware of and watching. I just need more information before I can start drawing links and performing link analysis and going through all these structured analytical techniques to try to figure out exactly what's going on or draw some kind of causation, right? I love a good internet skitzo theory just as much as the next guy. However, if we're wanting to actually have some tangible effects on targets, so to speak, it's going to take a little bit more time for me to bring a lot of this investigative stuff to light. So, I'll dig into the MacDill stuff a little bit more with the Chinese IEDs. These things are occurring. I just need some more time to kind of scoop them up together in a in a succinct product. So, moving to the Middle East, how goes the war this week? Overall, I want to stress two words above all else, diminishing returns. It is true that the United States is continuing to bomb targets throughout Iran. However, evidence is mounting that they are running out of the easy targets to strike. This is most sharply evidenced by this short video clip of strikes that was posted by CENTCOM the other day. Now, when I first saw this clip, I did a Looney Tunes-esque double take because in less than half a second, so much information was conveyed. This video shows air strikes of at least two construction vehicles, one front-end loader and what looks like a bulldozer. And these short clips are very, very telling. Now, just right off the bat, you can argue about whether or not these are valid military targets all you want. From my experience as an analyst working in a targeting shop conducting strikes just like this, at least during my time, these would not have been considered a valid military target. But again, that's also subject to what the target engagement authority, or TEA, will authorize. So, the legality of it, that's kind of dubious at best. But more broadly, this video clip is, to use quite an ironic term, a shibboleth. This is a tell. This is an indicator that something's not quite right here. Just to let everyone in on a little bit of targeting culture, whenever a targeting shop starts striking bulldozers, they are running out of targets. And the PAO who was given these clips did not know that little bit of targeting culture. Again, when I was working in a targeting unit for some stuff in Syria a few years ago, I would get phone calls from the Marines at an adjacent targeting cell at a at a neighboring base making fun of us. Like, we would get mocked because one of our generals got a wild idea and authorized a strike on a bulldozer. And you know what? My shop deserved all of that teasing because that's how big of a cultural deal this is within the world of targeting. It's just embarrassing. Like, you couldn't find a better target? That's all you could find is some guy's bulldozer? And in the real world, it really does get played up kind of like that scene from Generation Kill where Captain America shoots up that guy's uh with the AK and his guys say, "W- What are you doing?" And he ends up saying something like, "Denying the enemy transportation." or something like that. It's the same idea, right? You could probably pencil whip it and justify it, which is what they're doing CENTCOM's doing in these clips. You could definitely pencil whip it and justify it under a target engagement authority. But again, professional to professional, it's embarrassing. I would not want my name on a targeting package that that had like a bulldozer on it. It's embarrassing. So, hopefully that bit of insider knowledge helps a bit with context and maybe maybe it helps understand how the war is going. Of course, we don't want to, you know, lean on one extremely short video clip compiled by a PAO as, you know, confirmation of anything. It's more of just an indicator, really. And at this point, if the figures are correct and the Pentagon has indeed run 10,000 sorties so far during this war, I understand that they're probably having a hard time finding valid military targets. Like I and many others have been saying since the first few days of the war, all the dumb ones were killed during the first few days. And now that time has elapsed, the targets that remain will be vastly harder to find, fix, and finish, as the Pentagon likes to remind everyone with a phrase that a super motarded lance corporal might write down in the margin of his write-in-the-rain notebook. But that's what they're doing, literally repeating the most ineffective measures of the GWOT. And the Pentagon is unaware that the relationship between bombs dropped and targeting effectiveness is an inverse equation here. The number of bombs dropped does not equal winning the war. And that's exactly what the Pentagon is telling the public, and it's probably what they're telling the president, too. "Mr. President, Mr. President, look how many bombs we dropped today. Isn't that totally rad and cool?" They're dangling the plastic keys in front of every decision maker, and it's working because there are no low-level analysts in the room telling the president that the targets they're bombing now are becoming less and less effective as time goes on. It's not disparaging against the targeting process. This is just how targeting works. Guess what? Put on your big boy pants. Targeting's hard. Finding the enemy is hard, and they're trying to say that just because they dropped some bombs on some guys, you know, goat shack, that we're actually reducing the Iranian military capability. However, let's make no mistake though in thinking that American bombing isn't doing anything at all. That's not true. We have devastated a substantial part of their economy, and it will take a century, probably, to recover from what devastation we have wrought throughout Persia. But when it comes to the real threats, the missiles and the drones, are we able to target the Iranians effectively enough to stop these types of attacks? Can we bomb the Iranians enough to stop the drone attacks and open the strait? The answer is undeniably no, or at least history does not indicate so. Going all the way back to Vietnam, Operation Linebacker 2, we have never really been able to launch a large-scale bombing campaign that bombs the enemy into complete and total submission without a ground force being part of that element as well. There is only so much that you can do from the air, and President Trump can get on TV all he wants and say that we've taken out all of their missiles, but the dozen or so warheads that land in Tel Aviv every single day and night are proof that this is just not the reality of what's happening on the ground. On the diplomatic front, things are tenuous at best, and now that the war is officially 1 month old, let's take a break for a moment and really reassess what is happening at the strategic level. We can take a look at the more tactical level stuff throughout the week, but today we're really trying to get a good beat on what's actually going on strategically, and this week it's been really crazy. President Trump initially stated that Iran had a 48-hour ultimatum to open the strait, otherwise we would bomb their energy production facilities. But the next day he extended this deadline by 5 days to yesterday, Friday. Well, this deadline came and went, and President Trump extended the deadline again by another 10 days. All the while this was going on, the Israelis were striking multiple Iranian nuclear facilities, steel factories, and other targets throughout the country. So, the war between Israel and Iran is definitely still going on, definitely still quite hot. And Netanyahu himself stated that a ceasefire between Iran and the United States does not apply to Israel, so they're going to keep attacking, which is just incredible. That like that's that's that's just something else. But what this mostly does for us is eliminate the chance for peace. And through our own actions, we have made it very hard to achieve any sort of deal without giving up a lot of stuff. Eventually, all wars come to an end, do they not? And you can have peace two ways. You can have peace through a negotiated settlement, or you could have peace by killing everyone on one side of the conflict. Considering the long train of human events, we very rarely end up killing every single person on one side of the war, so there's usually going to be a negotiated settlement. Again, unconditional surrenders, even though the US is openly stated that's what we're going for, unconditional surrender is very rare throughout history. Most of the time there's going to be some kind of negotiated settlement. And when if you know you're going to negotiate your way out of a war, shooting yourself in the foot and giving up a lot of your negotiating power is probably not a good idea. But we did exactly that. Remember, we started this war by using tactics that humanity has normally seen at the end of a war. So, we used late war tactics right at the start. We killed a religious leader and his wife and children during his religious holiday as part of the opening salvos of the war. Militarily speaking, I speculate that some people were able to convince the president the decision to take out the Ayatollah was a low-risk operation. They probably didn't tell him that killing a head of state would have consequences. They probably did not think this through, and even if they did think this through, they didn't really care. They gave him the play school, you know, plastic keys jingling in front of your face kind of answers to things, and we saw this confirmed more or less with the infamous lay down your arms speech that President Trump gave on the day of the strikes. Which in retrospect, now that we can look back on that event, we can look back on that speech, we can see just how utterly insane that was. That >> [laughter] >> That was so utterly ridiculous that they thought that was actually going to work. But anyway, again, you know, hindsight is 20/20, I guess. But even when we were watching these events happen in real time, even even then we knew this was a bad idea. We knew that this was not going to work. So, it's not like we had to wait a whole month of, you know, this this conflict dragging out to know that bad decisions were being made. No, we could see the bad decisions were being made before the decisions were made. Starting a sneak attack during peace negotiations is a low blow that makes it very, very hard to extract ourselves from because now we're trapped. And nobody told Trump that taking out the Ayatollah was a trap. Our diplomats, think about this, our representatives to the world openly brag about pretending to seek a diplomatic solution, but in secret they were really just stringing the Iranians along because they had no intent of seeking a deal. They just wanted war. It is very unpleasant to note these things. This is for sure. Like I don't take any joy in reporting this. But I myself I'm trying to think about what challenges I would have back in my old life as an NCO, right? And adopting that frame of mind, I would be furious that the Pentagon is behaving the way that they are because when you start off a conflict like this in this particular manner, it makes it incredibly hard to fight on the ground. For all of the NCOs and junior officers out there that are having to manage their guys during a time like this, I know that you guys are having a hard time. I really do. I do not relish the thought of having a bunch of PFCs or lance corporals under my wing who are watching what their secretary of war is saying and having to walk back his statements. It's probably quite tough to do that. As a military leader of any pay grade, it is your duty to be magnanimous in victory. Like that's what gets beat into your head and was certainly a very big part of the GWOT. You do your job with honor, integrity, and professionalism. We know that the war is not necessarily being fought on American terms or even for the right reasons in the first place. We know this and we can't ignore it. But you take the part of the war that's right in front of you, and you do the best you can with it. That's what anybody is going to do. You do not seek out atrocity, and you do the best you can to preserve your own honor day to day. You do not double tap rescuers trying to pull people from the rubble. If we are fighting a war based on bloodlust, we have lost the plot, and I am very concerned that a lot of high-ranking military officials have done just that. And my heart goes out to the low-level dudes out there who are just trying to keep their guys on the narrow path and out of trouble. I really do think and pray for you guys every single day because much of our military leadership are acting like psychopaths at this point and behaving in ways that are below the station that they hold. All warfare is based on deception, but treachery is not a virtue. We must remember that, even though our government has forgotten it. We do not worship death on the battlefield. A lance corporal making a crude remark about some drone footage is a lot different than the secretary of war doing it. We do what we have to do, but we cannot lose our humanity, and from what I see, we are in extreme danger of that happening if it hasn't happened already. We are Americans. We stop harm from befalling the innocent without hesitation, using violence to do so if need be. But once that enemy is out of the fight, we show them mercy and compassion. And now the Pentagon is trying to act like mercy is a bad thing in any context. And all I can say to that is, may the Lord have mercy on us for allowing this evil mentality to flourish and for not having the courage to call this out sometimes. We have got to change this, and I just don't know how. I just thought it was important to include these ideas for the record just in case we actually end up going into a ground fight on this because when and if we start putting boots on the ground, all of these ideas, all of these sentiments are going to get dialed up to 11. Right now it's just an air war. There's not that much risk, but when you start putting boots on ground, the risk goes up, and also a lot of cascading other effects start shaping up, too. Things get really complicated, and even right now, when it's just the air war component, when it's just a bombing campaign, we're really not fighting this war on good moral or just terms. And this is not to disparage the guys on the ground. I mean, we can definitely support those guys who have been, you know, put in a tight spot and are doing the best they can. But at the top, all we hear from the war department is death, destruction, and ego. None of that magnanimity that got beat into our heads during the GWOT era. None of that integrity or honor. None of that avoiding unnecessary killing. None of that healthy respect for the enemy or at least recognizing that they are defending their homeland. Even in Afghanistan, when we were getting shot at all the time, no one was considered a Taliban sympathizer, right, for realizing that the Taliban fighters were doing what they had to do. That was their job. We had our job, too. And there's a healthy respect there. And you can certainly have some level of respect for your adversary during a time of war, at least when it comes to the uh things they can do to you, right? And even so, having respect for your enemy is not something that's just a moral teaching. It's not really just a moral thing. It's also a practical thing. Having a healthy respect for your adversary prevents your ego and hubris from driving your own operations. You don't have to like them, but be very, very unwise to just think that they're all just goat herders, right? And the Pentagon is just going crazy, and they're they've lost all nuance with this kind of stuff, at least publicly, right? I don't know what the generals are saying to each other in private. I don't know what they're saying off camera, but I can tell you the media blitz with this is not good. It's not doing us any favors, and it's making everything harder. Of course, I'm not exactly saying that a hearts and minds campaign would work in this case. I don't think that would work. The reason that the Pentagon propaganda is the way that it is, and it's understandably the way that it is, is because really driving this war on a strategic level. We didn't go to war on our own terms, and because of that, their propaganda has to look a certain way, which is fine. That's their prerogative. But what is undeniable is that a kill everything and everyone approach, that's not really good, either. We're turning the whole world against us, and we're going to have nobody to blame but ourselves for allowing these events to take place. Look, guys, I hate it. And I personally have no sympathy for the Iranian regime, just like everybody else. I also have a very long memory, and I do not forget every EFP, every roadside bomb, and every rocket and mortar that the Iranians gave to insurgent groups to target Americans with. And I certainly hope and pray that America wins the war, because this is my country and this is my home. And that's what you do when you live in a place on Earth. But reality is reality, and through the actions of our leadership, we have given the Iranians the moral high ground for this present conflict, and that makes me absolutely sick. Again, I'm coming back to the perspective of the service members actually prosecuting targets during this war. And I'm imagining the targeteer opening up their joint publications, their JP360, to see that we cannot target civilian infrastructure because it's a war crime. That gets beat into your head all the time as a targeting guy. Oh, it's a war crime. That's a war crime. This is not just something the left loves to screech, you know, because they don't understand what a war crime actually is. No, I'm really talking about the CENTCOM targeting guidance, such as things like the CAT 1 or category 1 no strike list, right? All of the list of targets that we can't strike in war because of not just, you know, this frivolous thing called international law. Like, I mean, like our actual like laws that are meant to be adhered to by the United States, set in place by Congress, mostly for the purposes of making sure that we keep our humanity. That's what a no strike list is for. It's not really for international law. We don't care about international law. It's for keeping your humanity. And then the president gets on TV and says we're going to strike civilian infrastructure, the same targets that you could crack open a book and see like right at the very top, no, you can't hit civilian power plants. Can you imagine what that's like to sit there and having to be a targeting analyst where you're looking at targets that are completely war crime targets. Again, not in the leftist way of like, "Oh, war crime." No, I mean like actual like stuff that damages your soul kind of targets. And they're striking these things left and right. I have plotted almost 2,000 impact craters on my maps, and in my opinion, having worked in a CENTCOM targeting shop in the past, I've seen enough to let me know that they've thrown a lot of this doctrine out the window, and they are prosecuting targets against long-standing doctrine. We are dropping land mines in civilian towns at this point, which I don't think has been done since Vietnam or maybe even Korea. Land mines are indiscriminate killers, and the very minute that a civilian gets killed by an American land mine in Iran will be the day that America no longer has the right to complain about IEDs killing Americans. And at this point, we are speed running our way to violating every ideal that we used to hold dear. I don't like it myself, and of course, nobody in the West wants to give the Iranians credit for anything. But from a purely neutral perspective, during the lead-up to this war, it was the United States that breached international norms by pretending to engage in diplomacy while never intending to abide by a deal. And that trust being broken cannot be dismissed by anyone. It's going to take a lot of effort to build that trust back. Now, you can argue, "Well, we've got our aircraft carriers and our submarines and our missiles and our cool bombs and stuff." But look, man, as much as I would love to be a participant in a lot of American exceptionalism these days, there's a little bit more nuance to it than that, right? House cannot blame anyone for not wanting to negotiate with the United States right now, because American diplomacy has now boiled down to do what we want or we'll kill you and your entire family, which is fair enough in some circumstances, right? I mean, that's that's kind of what you have to do in some ways, right? I am a Roman citizen. I am an American, right? You have to bring that mentality to the world to some degree. But again, there is no crying in the casino of war, and the Iranians still hold quite a few cards to play, which means that the war has the potential to continue for some time if the belligerents so desire. The other factor that the Iranians are probably thinking about is that if they agree to any sort of peace agreement, the Israelis will just bomb them anyway, since it has already been demonstrated by the strike at South Pars that the Israelis are acting unilaterally in this conflict. Right now, sushi from a truck stop in Kansas is more trustworthy than an American ceasefire, and the Iranians are completely correct in assuming that our word means nothing. Granted, in a larger sense, none of the belligerents in this conflict are completely trustworthy, either. So right now, when it comes to potential peace talks, it's a wash. Most of the statements made by American officials have been easily verifiable lies, and President Trump has mostly been saying stuff just to calm economic markets. But also, the Iranian messaging is fairly unreliable, as well, because they aren't talking much. I mean, they don't really have to. All they have to do is survive, so they don't really need to have this propaganda campaign. But even so, most of their media, the Iranian media that is broadcast to the outside world, is mostly just the, you know, the low-grade Middle Eastern flavored propaganda that is very common for wars like this. So they're not really putting in that much effort. I mean, again, they don't have to. They're on the defense, right? When you're on the defense, you you have a lot of advantages. And of course, the Israelis are going to do whatever they want, which is fair enough from their perspective, but their targeting efforts will absolutely derail any potential deal the US and Iran want to cook up later next week during the alleged halt to bombing of civilian infrastructure within Iran. Even though, honestly, it's becoming a little bit dangerous within the United States to truthfully and neutrally examine the overall situation regarding the war. The Iranians have actually carried out relatively proportionate and reciprocal targeting during this campaign, with the exception being the first couple of days when comms were down and local commanders shot at basically everything in range. The ballistic missile strike again at Dimona, which the Israelis tried to amplify quite a bit with Prime Minister Netanyahu himself going to the impact crater, the impact sites there. This attack, while it was horrific, you know, it's always horrific anytime civilians get killed, this was actually a reciprocal attack targeting the Israeli nuclear program. Specifically, they were targeting a bunker that was allegedly being used by Israeli scientists, which was underneath uh the civilian city there. And this attack itself was conducted after the Israelis targeted the bunkers at Bushehr nuclear power plant a few days ago. So again, this is a tit-for-tat kind of thing. Similarly, various GCC states, mostly just the Arab nations of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, uh places like that, they've been complaining that Iran is launching unprovoked attacks into their nations. However, CENTCOM themselves frequently publish videos of HIMARS systems launching ATACMS missiles into Iran from these same nations. So once again, it's mostly a wash. You don't get to sit there and complain that, "Oh, the Iranians have hit our airports," when you've got ATACMS flying through your airspace, and you're letting the Americans conduct a war from your terrain. You're in this war. So again, this is just a mess all around. But again, let's not over-romanticize the Iranians themselves by any means. They are in this for the long haul, and they know that needlessly targeting things they don't need to will result in public opinion turning against them. What all of this means is that the targeting continues as before. The conflict, the war, the death, the destruction continues just like it has for four months now. And not only is the White House not looking for any off-ramps, but they are looking to intensify this conflict and escalate it as much as possible for the foreseeable future. I don't really care what they're saying. Our actions speak louder than words, and considering the contradictory words from the White House this week, I can't really make assessments based on what they say, only what they do. And so far, cargo flights have been increasing into the region, and advanced party from the 82nd Airborne is already in the Middle East to supplement the two MEUs, which should be arriving uh they should have gotten there by now. And within the homeland of the United States, there are indications and warnings of more units being deployed, as well. The shining example of pinpoint precise journalism that is the Wall Street Journal has leaked that the Pentagon is slated up to 10,000 more troops, regular army, to deploy, as well. Whether or not that's true is anyone's guess, but so far, the United States is making preparations for a more protracted ground fight. However, there are still a few indicators that I have been watching for that haven't really lined up just yet, so I don't think we're going to be invading Iran anytime soon, at least not within the next week. Or at least I certainly hope not, because the forces on station right now are not enough to occupy a Buckee's is a Friday night. So we have some more time before we freak out about Americans putting boots on ground. Maybe by the end of next week at the earliest, depending on how serious they are, but again, time will tell. So, all in all, 1 month into the conflict, the situation remains just as steady as before. The Iranian regime has not collapsed, and it will not collapse without a total occupation of the country. Whether that happens or not is anyone's guess at this point, but we will certainly be on the lookout for any indicators that may emerge over the next few days and weeks. And with that, that's all I have for today. I know kind of a short day, a little bit shorter than what I was expecting. So, let's wrap things up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, another fantastic week for taking the information space to the real world and to trying to exchange information with each other in a more off-grid manner. I know that it's a little boring and super niche, but I think this is a huge part of not just preparedness, but also the act of doing something physical helps a lot. This may sound really weird, uh but over the past few years, I've been working with radio, and especially since the Ghost Net has been working well, I have found that the information that I get via HF radio just it seems more real. It seems like the stakes are higher and or or maybe that there's much more investment in finding out the truth or something like that. I don't really know how to describe it. Maybe some of you know what I'm talking about. It's almost like the same piece of information has more weight when I see it coming in through my radio to my JS8 call screen as opposed to when I just doomscroll past it on my phone. It's almost like the physical act of getting outside, touching grass, and actually putting in some physical work to be informed is a major motivating factor for finding out the truth. Of course, we must always trust but verify everything, but still, in the days ahead, I think that getting involved in the world of radio is a good thing to merge a lot of this this online information space stuff with the real world to kind of help us balance out a lot of that stuff because I think that we tend to doomscroll way too much these days. I'm speaking for myself. I know I do it way too much each day, right? So, getting outside, or even if you have like an indoor radio or something, just you know, being involved in this kind of thing helps quite a lot, I think, even if all you do is receive the signals that others are transmitting. So, a very special thank you to all of you for contributing to the Ghost Net project. I think it's working great. I can't wait to see how this develops over time. It will It will get better. It will get a lot more helpful as time goes on, and I'm sure that there are a lot of other endeavors out there trying to do the same thing to bring a lot of informational efforts to the world of radio. So, that's all I have for today. As always, all of my research and source material can be found on my Obsidian page to trust but verify everything that I use to conduct my daily analysis, and the mapping data that you have seen today and throughout the week can be viewed online via my ArcGIS maps or downloaded offline as KMZ files for use in A Tac if you want to replicate exactly what I have here. All of the links are below as usual, and I hope to continually update all of these products throughout the week just like I do every single day. So, thanks again for sticking with me. Thank you for all of your support, and thank you to all of you on Patreon who keep the project going, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight the sheep.