hello again everyone welcome back to the underground this is the briefing for thursday the 20th of january 2022. sorry it's been a while since our last brief we have been super busy trying to work on a lot of communication stuff a lot of educational stuff that's going to be coming out sometime soon and of course uh the past at least two to three weeks have been filled with preparation for the ukrainian war which is looking more imminent with every passing moment as a result we're going to keep this brief light today and we're going to go ahead and skip past the stuff i normally talk about and just start with logistics so i really don't have that many specific logistics but if any of you have been to the grocery store over the past week or so you know that this is a common trend these days for whatever reason i don't know if this is a genuine shortage or if it's one of those manufactured shortages where a journalist writes a newspaper article or something on twitter and it starts trending and sooner or later everyone's out of everything but it's most certainly a very tangible thing that a lot of places are having shortages right now we're talking shortages of pretty much everything you could possibly imagine consumer goods meats fresh fresh food products uh all kinds of stuff and some of this in different areas can be attributed to staffing shortages other parts of it other areas of the country is really hard to tell what the logistical challenges are but just know that there are a lot of shortages i i simply cannot name them all you'll see a lot of things on on twitter like the the hashtag bear shelves biden is trending on twitter but unfortunately again these kinds of pictures don't really give us that much information they tell us a snapshot in time that that one specific area if someone even tells where the picture is it only gives us a snapshot and we don't really get a good idea of what's going on so somebody could take a picture like this and circulate it around social media and then you have to deal with man pictures of of things like the earlier shortages people saying oh look at you know look at my local grocery store and it turns out it's a picture from like three years ago it's really hard to tell this stuff um so yeah i hate to just kind of leave everybody hanging on the logistics front that oh yeah there's shortages of of what well everything um yeah so something to keep in mind as we start getting a lot of the winter weather for a lot of parts of the country you know that that normally brings about shortages and speci especially in areas like like where we're at where we don't normally get a lot of winter weather but we get just a little bit you know and everybody gets kind of crazy so something to keep in mind is logistic logistics is going to be a a problem for the foreseeable future at least at least for the next couple of weeks and we can talk about that a little bit when we go to critical infrastructure so one of the bigger items of critical infrastructure news coming out this week is the 5g rollout scandal scenario i don't really know what to call it basically what's happening is a lot of cell carriers are rolling out 5g in a lot of areas and foreign airlines are are actually boycotting flights to the united states so as a as of the past 24 hours we've seen many many many foreign airlines cancel flights to the united states in response to the rollout of 5g in larger parts of the united states so the reason for this is that at least in europe they have found that the radar altimeters or the radio altimeters or or different kinds of systems on board aircraft both fixed wing and rotary wing are being affected by 5g they think nobody really has put out any concrete data on it that i've seen so far it should be fairly simple you know what what bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum does 5g operate on and you know what bandwidth do you know aircraft systems operate on well you know aircraft are different so in any case what is the result of this is airlines are canceling flights so no american airline company has done anything as far as i've seen they're pushing back on it but they haven't actually canceled flights so yeah this has just kind of spun way out of control over the past 24 hours or so and it's become a really big deal really quickly even though 5g has been out in a lot of areas in the united states for a very long time now i mean where we're at we've had 5g for a very long time there's like a you know a 5g tower like like less than half a mile from where i live and you know it's it's been there for at least a year and a half now i think so you know i don't really know what the effects of this are going to be on aviation long term but i can tell you it is causing a lot of consternation within the aviation community specifically when it comes to foreign outside the united states aviation assets trying to have flights to the united states also number two they're keeping in the theme of logistics uh or at least disruptions there has been a rash of or rather i should say a lot of viral videos come out lately regarding los angeles rail theft so i'm sure a lot of you have seen the videos um if i can find a clip that i could think i can get away with putting on youtube i'll put it up but honestly it's everywhere it's on every social media app and platform nowadays you've probably seen the the pictures of these uh train uh derailments there was actually a train that was derailed that a lot of people are thinking is due to people trying to derail the train to stop it to get the consumer goods out of the shipping containers so yeah this is something that's like normally i wouldn't touch because it doesn't have a whole lot of intel value and it's just you know it tends to be one of those really inflammatory social issues it doesn't really have a whole lot of bearing on things um but it it just goes to show you the power of looting like you know it it's one thing to talk about you know so you know a lot of people hundreds of people going in and looting like a consumer goods store you know like a luxury goods store like a luxury clothing store or something like that and just running out with stuff well you know that just kind of speaks to the crime in the country or the crime in a specific area but now we're starting like when we're starting to see trains derailed so that people can steal amazon packages that's a big deal and i would i would be very surprised if the larger shipping companies specifically the rail companies themselves from an insurance standpoint their insurance companies might force them to start using different tracks in different shipping hubs so we'll see how this goes um this has been a problem in california specifically los angeles for a very long time i haven't really seen this be an issue anywhere else in the united states there have been a lot of train derailments and terrorist activity up in the pacific northwest i do know that that has gotten almost no press over the past couple of years but there have been quite a few incidences if you can search that on your own but yeah if we're starting to see trains derailed just so people can steal stuff yeah that's going to be a huge liability because trains are very expensive and they you know just because they're carrying amazon packages and on one car they might be carrying medication on the next car or petroleum on the next car or some kind of you know chemical substance you know somewhere on that train so again huge deal something to keep an eye on and yeah i guess we'll just have to watch and see what happens thirdly again something to keep in mind is cellular communication not being reliable now this is a again a very huge deal i feel like this is the brief of very huge deals uh because usually when we when we talk about things like censorship we're talking about things like social media and there's a reason for this because social media has found exceptions to telecommunications laws or different parts of us code that they can use as justification for censoring things for instance a lot of social media apps claim that they act as a publisher and a publisher can choose what content they host and what content they don't however a lot of people are of the opinion that a lot of social media are acting as public infrastructure and that you know kind of changes his rule well well here's the thing stop talking let's stop talking about social media for a second cellular communications telecommunications providers they are public utilities and public utilities that is a big no-no to sensor we're talking going all the way back to like the watergate stuff and wiretaps that's how far back this legislation goes when it comes to specifically telecommunications providers either censoring or tapping or surveilling different kinds of communications so while the you know the social media stuff social media censorship that's relatively new as of the past 10 years or so this uh cellular cellular communication and telecom agencies in general are very much uh have very strict rules when it comes to this so when you've got uh like t-mobile is one of the bigger ones that says hey we have the right to censor your text messages well no you don't there's a whole stack of us you know code that says you can't do that but they're continuing to do that so again this is a a much larger thing that is worth paying attention to because i i really don't think a whole lot of people think about their text messages being you know censored like we we all kind of this is 2022 right we all kind of know that there's federal surveillance on pretty much every communications platform there is but when it comes to a cellular company choosing to not let a link go through that's a big deal and then like i also mentioned number four there wrapping up our critical infrastructure stuff again we're going to talk ukraine in a specific series we're going to launch another series on that depending on how things go but the short version of why the ukrainian conflict matters for united states infrastructure is that in the united states critical infrastructure particularly when it comes to cyber uh stuff that's a vulnerability there are lots of vulnerabilities in the cyber realm and russia may seek to capitalize on those vulnerabilities as a way of weakening the united states even further and kind of using that as a way to you know pump the brakes on us interactions basically russia is very much fond lately at least their senior military leadership is fond of giving warnings and things like that so we might see you know a pipeline go offline we might see an electrical grid go down and uh and that might be russia's way of saying hey stay out or else we're gonna do worse so we'll come back to that i guess when we talk about ukraine a little bit later but um yeah lots of vulnerabilities for our critical infrastructure these days and there's not really a whole lot we can do about it i guess except be prepared on an individual level moving on to significant governmental actions one of the most uh significant events that has occurred has been the supreme court overruling biden's medical mandates when it comes to uh private companies 100 persons or more i haven't read through the actual verdict yet i haven't read the opinion that the supreme court has put forward on it yet but it looks like the mandate for medical workers can stay and the mandate for everybody else has to kind of go away we're seeing a lot of things that are going to affect different communities very differently with this and here's what i mean um what the supreme court has said and i have to look at the wording again to confirm but from what i can tell it seems like of course this is all opinion anyway uh it seems like the supreme court says hey if you work in health care you have to get the jab because of medicare or medicaid funding if you work at an institution that gets that you have to get a job because of that i'm not quite sure how solid that logic is but it's i mean i think that's what they're trying to say again there's an entire field of law dedicated to just just kind of interpreting what the supreme court says because they never really do anything specific they always do broad brush broad brush stuff and lower courts have to interpret supreme court rulings so i have no doubt that this will occur specifically because a lot of health care workers are very upset about this as one might imagine because essentially the supreme court is saying in a de facto way is that depending on your job you have no rights to what to what you want to put in your own body if you work in a certain job you don't have that right to choose and that's kind of a dangerous precedent now again how other courts interpret this i don't know i don't have the bandwidth to kind of figure this stuff out i'm definitely no no expert on the law or or even a novice in the law i'm a complete neophyte when it comes to this kind of stuff but i can tell you that this is going to cause a lot of problems within the healthcare community because hospitals are going to crack down on this and healthcare workers are going to have very little leg to stand on so when it comes to an intel perspective this means that we're going to start seeing certain hospitals in certain areas usually probably major cities are going to have a lot of healthcare workers just leave and say it's not worth fighting this fight anymore so you're going to have a lot of service interruptions as a result of this now on the other side of that when it comes to the private private company stuff we're starting to see a lot of companies uh specifically companies that are sort of in the the the federal sphere like defense contractors and things like that saying okay the supreme court says that the federal government doesn't have to mandate it but they didn't say anything about us mandating it so we're going to mandate it still as a company and you know there you go it's like well what do you you know what do you do what do you do about that and then again also we have press releases from from the white house saying yeah i don't worry about the supreme court's ruling we're just go ahead with the mandates like i don't know i really don't know what to think about the rule of law these days i don't know if if any of it any shred of it exists left anymore so either way something also along the the avenues of the white house is the concrete wall that the white house has put up so again not really a whole lot of intel value here other than this just kind of happened so it's just like like a news note but i do think that when it comes to what the interpretations of why they would have put the wall up uh yeah why would the white house put a concrete wall up well it's because they're scared so they think there's a vulnerability there and they want to patch that vulnerability why did the vulnerability did the vulnerability was it always there or was it is it a new vulnerability i don't know there's a lot of protests coming up uh in at the end of the month here so maybe that has something to do with it i don't know i'm more inclined to think that it's just the increasing of the military-industrial complex uh and the fortification of our public infrastructure when it comes to you know the political elites that's what i really think it is moving on kind of moving back to the jab stuff uh we're starting to see an interesting trend come out of california and as we all know if it happens in california and it's kind of totalitarian sounding it's going to make its way to other places too is it's very interesting a lot of places in california are saying that essentially if you are jabbed and you still get the medical condition right if you're you're fully jabbed you've got however many um doses we're on now if you get that and you're all current on that and you still get get sick you can come back to work but if you are unjabbed um and you know you're healthy you don't have any kind of sickness um clean out your desk essentially so it's one of those things that kind of proves that this has nothing to do with any kind of you know medical science or anything like that it's really just affecting the the economics as a way to conduct economic warfare and starve out political enemies and stuff like that so again something to keep your eye on because every time i look at something and i say man that's that's kind of totalitarian i bet you it'll it'll make its way around the united states pretty soon so we'll we'll be on the lookout for that and then moving down to number four there uh congress uh actually had a report released uh this was um uh this is actually also been making its rounds on the kind of alternate news sites is that a lot of congress people actually beat the market when it comes to trading so essentially what people are saying is that there's a there's an average for what the market does and generally speaking of course again not a financial expert whatsoever here generally speaking if you do better than what the uh markets average is um that looks a little bad looks highly suspect it almost looks like you knew or had some kind of insider trading stuff going on there and a lot of congress people were up were were apparently you know doing that kind of stuff so a lot of congress people both republicans and democrats alike it's very very much equally split somehow miraculously made a lot of money when the market was doing very poorly so again this is kind of just like more homework for later but if you want to check that out i think it's kind of interesting but again not really a whole lot of intel value there except for you know i guess you know check out your politician to see where they rank on the list and then moving down to number five again this is one a a can of worms that i can't really get into much because it would just take too much time and that is has been the testimony regarding the fbi and the j6 congressional hearings uh really i think the most interesting part that has come out of that so far i personally haven't been following that very much because i think it's all just political theater but interestingly enough the fbi has pleaded the fifth uh the fifth amendment they've invoked their fifth amendment rights as an organization regarding their involvement in uh the jace january 6th whatever you want to call it i think that's interesting because uh there it's just it seems like how um it seems like the fbi probably had a larger role than what they're uh what they're letting on and i would be very interested to see what comes out of this months down the line but again right now it's all speculation none of this is really any has any concrete stuff so uh it's really hard to to say what the fbi did or what they had going on but i think that we can all kind of i think it's a softball assessment to say yeah the fbi was probably planning a lot of this so very interesting stuff indeed and continuing on there to number seven uh the biden regime recently as in the past couple weeks has given the taliban government uh of afghanistan 308 million dollars this is actually brings their total up to 782 million dollars since the fall of afghanistan so again it's very interesting to see where the where the biden regime chooses to spend their money they're obviously saying that it's for humanitarian reasons to prevent mass starvation but again as we all know time and time again it you know watch the movie blackhawk down and you know how giving money to a warlord works out uh we've seen a very large contingent of training operations being conducted by the taliban in afghanistan lots of different military academies that they have set up since the fall of afghanistan lots of special forces units being stood up the taliban is most certainly not just a group of dirt farmers anymore and they're taking advantage of all of the resources that we left behind and continue to give them in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars moving on to number eight there massachusetts has uh launched a digital passport for the you-know-what um and i think this is interesting this one caught my eye because it it states that from what i can tell it looks like most of the digital passport efforts are essentially just a digitization of a scan of an actual card right an actual like paper card and that's really all it is for the most part you see a lot of apps in the app store for things like that and it's really just a a a website that brings up the pdf that you've scanned in before however the massachusetts one i need to do some more digging on this because i'm not entirely certain it sounds to me like there's a lot of medical provider support for this as in there might be again don't quote me on this because i'm not quite sure because all of the mainstream news articles i've read on this which by the way is the only sources you can find on this a lot of these mainstream articles are very vague as to where they're getting the information but the reason that it kind of brings us up is a lot of people have found that their records aren't showing up and it's just kind of a sucky app and it doesn't work that well which is no surprise considering it's a government-built app right but the interesting part is that a lot of people are citing that hey you know they should have been able to pull this from my doctor like why is this not working and that kind of makes somebody like me think hmm does this mean that medical providers are cooperating with this and providing hipaa protected documents to an app that you know people might not know about i don't know we'll have to look into it more but i just wanted to kind of give you the heads up and again number nine there really no intel value for this i just thought it was interesting that nancy pelosi's son has been tied to a quite large criminal syndicate you can look into this stuff just you know search for nancy pelosi's son you can actually google it and actually it comes up in google shockingly enough uh but the interesting part about it is that uh it seems like there might be some stuff with nancy in there too i don't know i don't really care when it comes to politicians honestly i just thought it was interesting so if you guys find interesting there you go all right so moving quickly through our national guard slides here in the northeast region we have quite a few updates actually this is the most significant updates for the country i have been for massachusetts and maryland so again if you recall a few months ago or yeah several weeks ago now massachusetts actually declared you know mission accomplished right and they sent everybody home well now they're activating 500 personnel yet again to help with area hospitals for this whatever wave we're on now um of this of this stuff right so again we're not seeing hospitals being overwhelmed we're not finding any evidence of that whatsoever really anywhere in the country to be honest but there we go again 500 personnel in massachusetts have been activated at least according to the governor's office again you know one of the main reasons that we're providing this information is to kind of highlight the normalization of deploying significant numbers of troops on u.s soil for seemingly no reason whatsoever so again if you're in massachusetts just know that a lot of your hospitals are going to have a lot of service members you know working there doing various tasks and stuff like that maryland is a slightly different story i need to do a lot more research on this again not enough hours in the day right but the maryland deployment seems to be a lot more significant i don't have numbers at this time but it seems like it's quite a large deployment we're also seeing a slight change in the wording of the mission and i don't know if this is because of maryland's governor just not um speaking so eloquently when it comes to the mission during press releases or if this is something more nefarious i don't know what the deal is but it seems like the soldiers that are deployed in the state of maryland will have a more active role than just helping out at a hospital it seems like um you know we're getting reports of you know door-to-door efforts potentially we're seeing reports of you know jab stations being set up and all kinds of medical temporary medical facilities going up again i don't really know what the deal is i guess we'll have to wait and see what actually shakes out but it seems like the the maryland deployment is a lot more a lot more hands-on uh the governor himself has stated that a lot of national guard are going to be called upon to physically go out to places like nursing homes and uh offer medication and things like that so we'll keep an eye on it we'll let you know when we have more information i wish i had more right now but that's all we've got down southeast really no change whatsoever several states have activated their national guards for various things but really the numbers are pretty much the same same with the midwest no change there and for the southwest there have been a few incidences with the soldiers in texas so again we're starting to see if you guys recall the incidents with oregon with a lot of national guard service members and senior military claiming that the the the political leadership of oregon was simply deploying the national guard just as a political means and we're starting to see inklings of that right now um actually that's putting it lightly we're seeing a lot we're seeing a lot of complaints from um very junior soldiers as well as commanders and we're seeing a lot of people complaining that this is just kind of a bs mission at this point that greg abbott is keeping people down at the border in very squalid and horrifying conditions just to serve as like a political you know finger right to the biden regime so i guess we'll have to see how this works out but we're getting report after report after report uh from soldiers down there stating that they're basically living in uh worse than incarceration conditions um and we've seen a lot of photos and it's yeah it looks it looks pretty bad so you know again greg have its own numbers state that we're talking roughly 10 000 army national guard slash state guard slash department of public safety guys in this theater of operations for operation lone star and it looks like this is doing a lot more harm than good especially when we start starting to see more incidences between the soldiers and the civilian populace or the cartel down there this just uh we're starting to see a lot more incidents regarding that then moving out west uh speaking of oregon uh like i mentioned oregon has a history of their political leadership abusing the army national guard and air national guard assets of the state for political reasons or at least so the service members have been complaining well apparently they haven't learned their lesson because there is a new push in oregon to deploy soldiers yet again uh to state area hospitals so this actually occurred over the you know past couple of weeks between the last brief and now we have in oregon over 1200 soldiers and airmen deployed around the state to various hospitals and stuff like that and um yeah i guess we'll have to see if if they're treated any better this time but yeah it certainly seems like it's more political than not so again that's our national guard outlook or rather wrap up for this brief moving on to the k-12 public school slides uh there is one update that that i haven't changed on the slide yet but i wanted to speak to and that is virginia so for those of you who don't know virginia got a new governor and on the very first day has signed a lot of executive orders banning mask mandates uh launching inve the new attorney general uh there in virginia is launching a lot of investigations regarding the mistreatment of of thing of children and things like that so i haven't actually looked at what has been done so i didn't want to change the slide just yet so i don't know if how this is going to work out because as we know right this slide is misleading in in and of itself because a lot of states don't have legislation that either bans or mandates masks being worn in public schools but schools do like for instance texas is kind of one of those states where for a time period there remember a couple months ago texas had a a ban on mass mandates and yet like 90 percent of all the school districts in texas were mandating masks so it's like what what what's going on here um you know south carolina's still kind of in that situation and virginia might be in that situation now so we've got to drill down and do more uh work to figure out what's going on in virginia there likewise with the the actual jab mandates no real change there we're starting to see a lot more resistance in california as one might expect so that state might actually be turning a different color here very soon but i guess we'll have to see and then finally for the kind of overall resistance tracker sort of thing that we've got going on here is uh the only thing i changed is virginia i changed that to green just because of again all of the efforts that have been undertaken by the recent state political leadership of virginia to reverse a lot of the stuff that the previous administration did so this might be all a farce i don't know we'll have to see how this stuff works out in the end but right now um you know the commander in chief of the virginia national guard is is doing some pretty decent stuff to reverse a lot of this stuff now again we'll have to see how this works out but as far as on paper goes it seems like virginia's moving in the right direction then moving on to mandate failures i haven't actually changed this slide but there is one update that i forgot to add to it and that is general electric so this is a big one general electric has um in the wake of the supreme court's decision to go against biden's mandates general electric has come to come out and said yeah we're not gonna mandate this stuff anymore and this is interesting you can kind of see which companies you know basically had the metaphorical gun to their head when it came to the mandates because general electric clearly had a workforce that was very resistant to it you know general electric is one of the largest employers in the country and so as one might expect you know in the field of general electric they're not going to be super happy about you know medical mandates and stuff but general electric being a federal contractor and having again a very good chunk of their uh profits coming from the federal government they're you know in a you know between a rock and a hard place and of course you know they chose the side of the government which is telling enough but i also think it's interesting that as soon as the supreme court came out and said anything against the biden regime general electric ran away from the federal government as fast as possible at least when it comes to these mandates you can see some other companies too and see what they want to do the companies that went out and instantly dropped their mandates due to the supreme court's decision those are interesting to look into a little bit more and i also think that the companies that uh haven't issued a statement or they haven't changed or they've doubled down on their mandate since the supreme court uh came out with their decision that's that's also telling as well and moving into international issues i really only have just a handful of stuff because like like i mentioned the past few weeks have just been filled with ukraine stuff um but uh one of the bigger ones is scotland so scotland has um been revoking medical treatment for expectant mothers if they are not jabbed and that has been something that has been rolling through the news outlets in the uk for a while now i'm going to be very interested to see how that works out because it seems like it seems like the united kingdom is kind of backing down from their stuff uh you know old boris uh he's he's gotten himself into a lot of trouble lately uh with what with um being uh confirmed to be at parties and hosting parties right when uh he was you know giving testimony before parliament uh regarding how dangerous and bad and you know winter of severe death and illness or whatever whatever he's been saying to the british population uh so yeah he's uh really having a hard time uh maintaining a a sort of straight face when it comes to all this stuff because it's really kind of obvious that it's just about totalitarianism at this point so we'll see how long this lasts the uk has had some a lot of resistance lately so again we'll see how scotland is able to pull that one out and then moving on speaking of medical resistance italy has also been very very vocal at least the italian people have been very very vocal and uh physical regarding their resistance to medical mandates as have been a lot of places around europe so again we're seeing some places double down like france has doubled down with with their medical tyranny but other countries um have have been quietly like backing off because they they see the power of the people i guess but um and then jumping back to europe for a second like i mentioned totalitarianism huge huge thing in europe these days uh specifically in germany and austria which have become really the poster child for how to violently crack down and hurt as many civilians as you possibly can if you're a government force so the german police and the austrian police have been observed to commit many many crimes against their people uh at least from what we can see just to you know force their tyranny on on people and uh people are uh people are not happy about that now as someone who has um uh spent some time in germany i've studied germany quite a lot i speak german it's uh not surprising whatsoever to see the stuff that is happening uh in germany right now their history um even though from an american perspective we like to make jokes about it right uh it's really it's really a cultural thing at this point i think and it's going to be very interesting to see what kind of resistance efforts come out of germany and austria as well two countries which honestly are very very different when it comes to the cultures of them but their governments as of late have been very very similar uh in the totalitarianism regard but again interesting interesting stuff to look up and then finally north korea our our fun little buddy out of the northern peninsula there has been up to no good with launching lots and lots of projectiles into the sea of japan um as of late so again i think that north korea is kind of a an international case study in just weird stuff right i don't think that you can look at north korea and and think that that's any kind of doctrine it's very it's a very special case study so when north korea launches missiles and things like that everybody looks and goes oh my god you know north korea is you know you know whatever well you know north korea is kind of a case study honestly their their their population is starving to death their political leadership is like the most comical bond villains you could possibly imagine and their technological capabilities while impressive in the regard that they can take old soviet equipment and duplicate it is not really something i would consider a major threat now that being said someone clearly thinks otherwise in the faa because a couple weeks ago there was a a national or i should say it wasn't a national it was just for the west coast grounds stop from the faa which was confusing for a lot of people and again i should point out this is very speculative because right at the time of a north korean missile launch is when the national grounds stop was initiated and a lot of people have been kind of confused by this they were everyone was confused at the time listening to police scanners of local areas and airports trying to figure out what's going on why the faa issue a ground stop has there been some kind of attack or something like that nobody could figure it out well a few hours later we find out north korea had launched a missile right during that kind of time frame so i don't know if this was some kind of emergency u.s military response that we they kind of let the cat out of the bag on or because they thought that maybe based on the trajectory of the missile that it might come close to u.s i don't know north korea is going to be very hard pressed to get a missile that far and even then we're going to have so much warning it's it's crazy um so i don't really consider north korea a direct threat to the united states and most analysts would agree it's you know north korea is definitely a threat to places like japan but you know as far as a north korean nuke landing in my backyard i'm not exactly holding my breath on that one but it's interesting to see the u.s response nonetheless if that in fact was a response and finally before i ended i wanted to talk about russia and ukraine for a bit because uh that has really been on my brain for the past few months now and especially i haven't been able i haven't really been thinking about much else other than ukraine lately as of the past couple of weeks and that's because we've seen a lot of very scary stuff happen let me put it to you this way as an analyst you try to you go through and a lot of times try to think of well what would world war three look like or what would something what would a gl mass global conflict look like what would be the early indications and warnings of such such an event like what would be the worst case scenario of stuff like that and um every analyst does this regardless of whether or not they want to admit it or not everybody has an end of the world plan or thinks about it at least because that's just kind of the you know nature of the job i guess but for me and for the rest of the team here we've seen some really scary stuff and i'm going to start off with the biggest one which is the norwegian communications cable being cut let me just say this is a this is a big freaking deal so for those of you that don't understand most of the communications on planet earth if you're wanting to get we're talking the internet military communications every basically every byte of information that that is um transits around the world has to go through communications cables right maybe not so much in the united states like you can probably send an email from california from a computer in california to a computer in new york and it never transit on a submarine cable a submarine cable meaning it's a cable that's under water like an undersea cable but for the most part these communications cables are the lifeblood of the human race essentially if you want information it's going to come from an underwater cable usually only just a few cables honestly so for instance the united kingdom is kind of freaking out right now because they're an island nation and they've only got a few cables going from the united kingdom across the english channel into europe and just a few days ago or i think a couple weeks ago now norway revealed that one of their submarine cables one of their undersea cables between the mainland and the svalbard archipelago which housed a satellite communications station had been cut um and that it and that not only had it been cut but it was like obviously cut in such a way that it was obviously a a man-made thing the ends of the cable were were many many meters apart it was most certainly not a geologic event because again cables on the literally laying on the sea floor they're heavily armored they're usually got you know many many inches of steel armor wrapped around them because geologic events occur underwater earthquakes and underwater like landslides and things like that can cut cables pretty easily and that happens fairly often um it happened a few years ago as a pretty big incident with the united states if i recall i had one of our cables cut that way and it was it was totally a natural event but this one was is definitely a uh is definitely a man-made thing so so the norwegians say and the reason for bringing this up is that russia over the since the cold war since the end of the cold war has pumped trillions and trillions of dollars into their undersea they call it oceanographic research uh branch of their navy so um we all know how the us navy works right or roughly speaking we have us navy sailors on u.s navy ships and we sometimes have you know merchant marines on naval ships and we have naval support ships like like hospital ships and oilers and things like that well the russians have an entire directorate that's basically like a naval version of the cia and their sole goal is to do secret squirrel stuff on the sea floor now we can get into this a lot further recently uh this has been a very hard topic to talk about or actually sorry in the past this has been a very hard topic to talk about only recently has this been talked about openly before but again this is very much a topic for another time the larger point here is that i personally can't think of any time when the russians would have actually cut a cable they've tapped a few cables they've tried to tap a few cables to tap into them literally like sending little mini submarines down with little arms on them that grab these cables and drill into them to kind of collect intelligence from them they've done that before but i've and they've practiced cutting cables uh because the reason this is all important is that one of the main kind of triggers for world war three or a very global conflict with russia being a major belligerent of that conflict is for russia to cut undersea cables essentially that's how you're going to know that world war iii has started when the internet just dies you have no communications whatsoever because you know 30 or 40 different undersea cables are all cut all at once that's kind of you know worst case world war three scenario um and one of these cables has been cut um very deliberately and this is something that is i'm sure this woke up a lot of dudes in the middle of the night and put them on planes because this is again i cannot state how how big of a deal this is now as far as any other cables i'm sure that other countries navies are inspecting uh their cables at the moment but again this takes months to do and this honestly since it was so deliberate this might have been one of those warnings like you know again to the western world hey don't mess with us in ukraine or else we're going to cut you know all of your cables next time because if you remember russia doesn't need communications cables they're the largest country on earth they you know have land-based systems whereas europe is very much you know has a lot of maritime space that that it occupies and that kind of ties into what i was mentioning earlier about the united states uh the vulnerabilities to the united states is that like hey if russia cut this cable let's just say they're the ones who did it and if they did it to serve as a warning to europe to stay out of its way with ukraine then you know i i can't imagine them not doing some kind of cyber stuff here in the united states so again that's why all of this stuff is kind of important to keep an eye on not just because this you know might spin out of control but also because we have direct impacts to the united states as well also briefly want to mention kazakhstan kazakhstan that that by the time that we had gotten slides together to talk about it it was already over essentially there was a coup that occurred in kazakhstan to kind of overthrow their dictator government and that coup was put down conveniently because russia sent a lot of airborne troops in at the request of the kazakhstan government to kind of help put that down and this matters for the airborne operations in ukraine because now those soldiers are currently free to invade ukraine or provide support for that and then finally with ukraine again i'm going to have a separate brief on this but the one thing that i did want to touch on is the possibility of a false flag attack now this is an important thing to note that i've been looking at a lot of russian media and uh russian sources along with american sources and they both say the same thing both sides both the western world and russia have have accused each other of planning false flag attacks to justify uh some kind of incursion polite word for invasion over the next 24-48 hours now as far as the united states planning a false flag attack to justify the united states backing up ukraine i think that's kind of a laughable concept the united states has done everything they possibly can to openly state that we're not going to support ukraine that is very much something that we have done i think that it's laughable for us to assume that we're going to do anything more than sends us some special forces maybe some equipment maybe um that even then the united kingdom is having to pick up the slack and send a lot of atgms to ukraine right now so again the united states is very much not interested in defending or helping defend ukraine which for whatever reason you know you can argue you can make arguments of of like hey we have this historical agreement that uh we you know said hey we we bought all of ukraine's or or forced ukraine to de-arm at the um with the agreement in mind that we would come to ukraine's aid uh militarily should they should russia get squirrely and you know the time has come ukraine did their part they disarmed themselves which i'm sure they're regretting now and the united states has not held up our end of the bargain but again i guess we can debate that another day when it comes to the actual false flag attacks reasoning uh i think russia has far more motive obviously they have more motive to conduct a false flag attack uh to justify their incursion slash invasion into the rest of ukraine because as we remember uh the question is not is russia going to invade ukraine because russia has already invaded ukraine eight percent of the ukrainian land mass is now part of the russian federation russia invaded ukraine in 2014 and that's just been the way it is since then the question is how much are they going to invade this time they're they going to launch another push to take even more of ukraine a lot of people are saying that these false flag attacks on both sides of the aisle are going to be kind of the go no go criteria for uh this invasion meaning that if russia can't pull off this this false flag attack they're going to wait until next year because the spring thaw is going to make it very difficult to maneuver in the ukrainian countryside once once everything starts getting muddy again and that would give ukraine the advantage i think me personally i don't think i think that was a valid argument a while back i don't think so now because i think that russia has stacked up they've invested too much too many resources now for them to for them to back down so i guess we'll have to see how it shakes out though but another thing that i wanted to mention is the not petya cyber attack now this was a cyber attack that got zero uh coverage in the u.s press but got a lot in the european press because of the uh petya cyber attacks from before so this is again a russian-based cyber cyber group launched a series of devastating cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in ukraine over the past couple of days now these attacks are very interesting because unlike the petya cyber attacks these are not or they were not intended to be ransomware they were intended to look like ransomware so that a person would think oh okay they're just trying to steal money from us while at the same time the the cyber attack was actually destroying stuff so this is one of those hard wartime like cyber attacks like our full you know cyber warfare stuff of destroying systems with no intention of getting money out of it whatsoever so that's interesting and yet yet another indicator that russia they mean business this time so again like i mentioned we're going to have a whole separate thing on ukraine here in just a bit for those of you who want to follow that conflict like i mentioned to the to the folks on patreon earlier uh we're kind of treating this like in afghanistan 2.0 with regards to the fact that there are americans in ukraine that probably would want to get out of ukraine if it were to be invaded by an invading force which is notorious for taking no prisoners so again if you think afghanistan was bad man just just wait because the ukrainian conflict has been very bad so far and we're just getting started so again as to the grand question that everyone's asking will russia do it i don't know nobody knows anybody who tries to tell you they know is lying to you or they're just guessing right now it's a 50 50 shot but i would i would argue that um or i would rather say that we're spending a lot of time making maps downloading imagery putting either products uh stuff like that because it's uh it's looking like it's an impossible uh impossible action for russia to step down at this point from this so it looks like it's it's not an if but when um and we you know again we might be fools and we might uh all look at this differently but hey it's better to prepare and have wasted a little effort making a map than it would be to uh to watch this on cnn so we'll keep moving forward and we'll uh catch you on the next brief um thank you again to everyone who has supported us it really helps keep the lights on here uh with regards to what we're able to do and capa

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

…Earlier this morning, the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center (UKMTO) reported an incident in the Strait of Hormuz, involving unidentified forces in small boats hailing a commercial vessel in an attempt to persuade the vessel to…

…This afternoon the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) center issued a maritime advisory warning of increased GPS jamming being detected in the Strait of Hormuz.

…The UK Maritime Trade Operations center has reported a total of four commercial vessels being hit with unknown munitions over the past 24 hours, sustaining unknown damage. Two container ships, a BCC, and a tanker vessel…

…For those who are just joining us now, the UK MTO or the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center is the leading authority for most maritime security issues in the Middle East. They cover other areas…